Unified telemedicine network for German university hospitals

Telemedicine enables remote treatment such as specialist diagnostics, monitoring or emergency consultation over long distances and without time delays with the help of digital communication technologies. Particularly in rural and structurally weak regions, the expansion of telemedicine is essential for comprehensive healthcare. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) now want to improve the hitherto heterogeneous telemedical infrastructure of German university hospitals as partners in the recently launched "University Telemedicine Network" project. The aim is to enable standardized telemedical recording of research data.

Sensitive handling of data from (Long) COVID

"Since we are in the medical field, we are automatically dealing with very sensitive data. Here, we have to be particularly careful in handling it, as patients might be identified and very private information about them might become known," explains Thorsten Strufe from KIT's KASTEL Institute for Information Security and Reliability. "My group and I are therefore looking at how we can protect the data during the merge and how it can be processed in the respective hospitals."

One focus of the project is to capture long-term consequences of COVID-19 and their risk factors. The unified telemedicine network will help hospitals provide optimal care for (long) COVID-19 sufferers by pooling and analyzing action plans and diagnostic and treatment strategies nationally. In addition, the network will drive collaborative developments in research and care and improve responsiveness to future crises.