New research centre for artificial intelligence in medicine

 

Improving healthcare while promoting personalised medicine: The new research centre CAIMed for artificial intelligence (AI) and causal methods in medicine will be established in Lower Saxony. Computer scientists and medical researchers from Hannover, Göttingen and Braunschweig will develop innovative methods and applications in the field of artificial intelligence. The Ministry of Science and Culture and the Volkswagen Foundation will contribute 15 million euros of funding provided over the next five years from the joint programme "zukunft.niedersachsen". Professor Wolfgang Nejdl from the L3S Research Center at Leibniz University Hannover (LUH) acts as spokesperson.

 

The digitisation of the life sciences is opening up entirely new possibilities for tackling major diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes or neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. The centre will focus on linking research, clinical and patient care data, the use of artificial intelligence and causal methods in medicine. Causal methods enable researchers to investigate the correlation between cause and effect of a disease. This will make prevention, diagnosis, treatment and outcome monitoring more effective and efficient, while enabling medical staff to identify and meet the individual needs of patients. The research team focuses on oncology, cardiovascular and pulmonary medicine and infectious diseases.

 

"With CAIMed, researchers in Lower Saxony are consistently linking their research activities in an interdisciplinary and cross-methodological way, while bringing the strong life and data science expertise in the Hannover-Braunschweig-Göttingen-Wolfsburg metropolitan region closer together. By using methods from artificial intelligence and machine learning, the researchers will gain new insights into modern, increasingly personalised medicine and open up new treatment perspectives, especially for patients suffering from one of the most widespread diseases", says Falko Mohrs, Minister of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony.

 

"If we want to take advantage of the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence, we need to master the technologies and develop them further. The CAIMed consortium brings together expertise from different locations to achieve this goal. Together, we can put Lower Saxony on the map of AI research and attract talent from around the world", says Dr Georg Schütte, Secretary General of the Volkswagen Foundation.

 

CAIMed spokesperson Professor Wolfgang Nejdl (LUH) adds: "At the Lower Saxony Center for Artificial Intelligence and Causal Methods in Medicine, we develop innovative methods for improved and personalised healthcare; therefore providing solutions to global challenges. By strengthening and by creating a network of excellent locations in Lower Saxony focusing on methodological AI research, data-intensive medicine, medical informatics and basic medical research, we are creating a unique beacon for research in artificial intelligence and personalised medicine".

 

"In addition to developing AI methods, we focus on translating them into clinical applications. The aim of our research is to use AI to improve decision-making and therapy in patient care. This will significantly increase the efficiency of our healthcare system in the future", says Professor Wolfgang Brück, executive board spokesperson of the University Medical Centre in Göttingen.

 

CAIMed brings together researchers from the L3S Research Center at LUH, Hannover Medical School, the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research Braunschweig / Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine (CiiM), as well as researchers from the University of Göttingen / Campus Institute Data Science (CIDAS) and the University Medical Centre in Göttingen (UMG).

 

Further information can be found at www.caimed.de.

 

Consortium:

• Professor Wolfgang Nejdl (managing director, L3S Research Center, Leibniz University Hannover, spokesperson of the CAIMed consortium)
• Professor Ramin Yahyapour (executive director, Campus Institute Data Science (CIDAS) at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)
• Professor Niels Grabe (Institute of Pathology at the University Medical Centre in Göttingen)
• Professor Michael Marschollek (Peter L. Reichertz Institute of Medical Informatics at TU Braunschweig und Hannover Medical School (MHH); L3S Research Center)
• Professor Michael Meyer-Hermann, head of the department Systems Immunology at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig