New project builds AI infrastructure for healthcare crisis management

Which hospitals could become unavailable in the event of a natural disaster? How many intensive care beds are available, and what medicines are in stock? In the future, answers to questions like these should be available and updated more quickly. As part of the collaborative AtheneKI project, researchers at the Medical Faculty of the University of Duisburg-Essen are developing the data science foundations and methods needed to achieve this, together with partners in Hamburg and Munich. The Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space is funding the three-year research project with approximately €7.4 million. Around €2.4 million will go to the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine.

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how difficult it can be to maintain an overview of the current health situation without adequate digital infrastructure. This is where the team behind AtheneKI comes in. The system is designed to bring together large volumes of information, simulate crisis scenarios, and thereby help identify emerging problems earlier and support better decision-making.

"Data in the healthcare system tends to be associated with concerns and fears in Germany. But the absence of data about the current situation is itself a threat," says Prof. Dr. Folker Meyer. He works at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (IKIM) and holds the Chair of Medical Informatics with a focus on Medical Data Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen. "We are not concerned with personal data. Instead, we are interested in data from hospitals and pharmacies, as well as wastewater and weather data."

At IKIM, researchers are developing the project's core data science methods. They bring together information from different sources, standardize the data, and develop AI-supported methods that can identify trends and unusual changes and flag them at an early stage.

Germany currently lacks an infrastructure for providing digital, timely information about the health situation and the state of the healthcare system across the country. AtheneKI is building this infrastructure. At IKIM, we are creating the data foundation without the need for burdensome reporting requirements."

Prof. Dr. Folker Meyer, Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine

The resulting insights can support professional and political decision-makers as well as representatives of hospitals and public health authorities.

The consortium is coordinated by the Bundeswehr Medical Academy.