University Hospital Aachen

The Universitätsklinikum Aachen (“University Hospital Aachen”, UKA) is a German university hospital, affiliated with the RWTH Aachen University and known for its advanced medical research and innovative treatments. It is one of Europe’s largest hospital buildings, housing 32 clinics and institutes covering a wide range of medical specialties such as cardiology, neurology, oncology, and transplantation. Since its establishment in 1870, UKA has grown into one of the largest and most respected medical centers in Germany and across the borders of neighbor countries, employing over 8,000 staff members and treating more than 300,000 patients each year. In addition to its clinical activities, UKA is also known for its groundbreaking research in the fields of medicine, biology, and engineering. Its scientists and physicians collaborate closely with other academic institutions and industry partners to develop new therapies and technologies. 

The Clinic for Operative Intensive Medicine and Intermediate Care (OIM) is the one of the largest clinics within the University Hospital Aachen. The clinic consists of seven wards with ~130 patient beds providing interdisciplinary care in more than seven key medical areas ranging from severe trauma to weaning. In addition to the patient care activities, the OIM is also highly active in research and development, producing over 150 publications per year in high-impact journals. It also houses the Telemedicine Center (TMZ), which provides more than 1000 remote consultations to regional hospitals per year, allowing the regional hospitals to access medical specialists. Furthermore, TMZ is a pioneer in the field of eHealth research and developed THALEA, which is a remote multi-ICU monitoring platform with international partners as a part of the EU Horizon 2020 Programme. Working closely with TMZ under OIM is the Innovation Center for Digital Medicine (IZDM). IZDM is the pacemaker and initiator for the further development of digital medicine and the improvement of intersectoral patient care in Germany and Europe. The center focuses on the research and development of a variety of topics from clinical robotics, clinical decision support systems, to digital skills education for healthcare transformation.

Role of institution in the project

UKA is involved in WPs 6 and 7. In T6.3 UKA will participate in the definition and implementation of privacy-preserving components by contributing its perspectives in both German national and international experiences in dealing with patient data protection. In T7.1a UKA will help dissemenate the external open call for new use cases. In T7.1b UKA will give input on potential use cases that require the perspective of  Intensive Care Medicine. In T7.2 UKA will contribute ICU Data. In T7.3 UKA will provide ICU perspectives on data and tools. In T7.4 UKA will provide ICU perspectives of the platform.

Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Gernot Marx

Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Gernot Marx, FRCA is the Director of the Clinic for Operative Intensive Medicine and Intermediate Care (OIM) at the University Hospital Aachen. He is also a board member of both the German Society of Anesthesia (DGAI) and Intensive Care and German interdisciplinary Association of Critical Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI), as well as the Chairman of the Innovation Center for Digital Medicine in Aachen (www.izdm.de). Prof. Marx is an expert in the field of telemedicine and eHealth. He is the editor of four ICU books and on the editorial board of five ICU journals. He has extensive experience coordinating close collaborations between academic/clinical researchers and industry partners in interdisciplinary projects at the regional, national, and international levels. Most notably, in recent national projects under the German Medical Informatics Initiative, he was the head of the Use Case ASIC and DigitalHub DISTANCE projects under the SMITH Consortium that was instrumental in the creation of the Data Integration Center in Aachen to promote the national interoperability of health data. Furthermore, his team was a key contributor in the EU Horizon 2020 project, Smart4Health, which developed an online platform to collect, manage, share, and donate health-related data throughout the EU.

Dr. Joyce Kao

Dr. Joyce Kao is a Senior Project Manager of EU Projects at the Innovation Center for Digital Medicine under the Operative and Intensive Medicine Department at the University Hospital RWTH Aachen (https://www.izdm.de). She obtained her Ph.D. in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from the University of Southern California and held postdoctoral positions at New York University and ETH Zürich with a focus on population genomics and the development of bioimaging and analysis pipelines for high-throughput phenotyping. She is a co-founder of the Open Innovation in Life Sciences (https://www.openinnovationlifesciences.com), a non-profit association in Switzerland that promotes Open Science among early career researchers and trains Open Science Ambassadors as a mentor and expert for the UK-based non-profit organization, Open Life Science (https://openlifesci.org). Her professional passions are creating open working environments using digital tools that promote efficient collaborative problem-solving.

Andreas Bleilevens

Andreas Bleilevens is a Project Manager at the Innovation Center for Digital Medicine within the Clinic for Operative Intensive Medicine and Intermediate Care at the University Hospital Aachen. Since 2014 working at the University Hospital Aachen, he gathered a lot of experience managing laboratories and research projects. He is a Master of Science in the field of Laboratory Animal Science. He has more than 8 Years of experience in the field of Cancer research. In addition, he specialized during his masters in the field of microsurgery and imaging. The urgently needed digitization of the health system and better communication between the different entities are his professional focus.

Antonios Antonopoulos

Antonios Antonopoulos is a research associate for the data evaluation department at the Innovation Center for Digital Medicine within the Clinic for Operative Intensive Medicine and Intermediate Care at the University Hospital Aachen. Originally a physicist, he completed the MSc Physics program of RWTH Aachen in 2018 with a focus on nanophotonics and phase-change materials. Since 2019 he has switched focus into the field of data analysis, working in varied fields such as biophysics, near-infrared optics and lately healthcare. He specializes in utilizing various data analysis tools in support of the team’s data evaluation requirements.

Join the EUCAIM Consortium

Open Call for New Beneficiaries

We’re inviting new partners to enhance our pan-European infrastructure for cancer images and artificial intelligence.

Whether you’re a data holder with valuable cancer images or an innovator developing AI tools for precision medicine, this is your chance to contribute to a groundbreaking project.

Apply by 10 June 2024!

Open Call Webinar

We recently hosted a webinar with more details for prospective applicants to the open call. A recording is available.

Our open Call for new collaborators
launches in April 2024

Opportunities for data holders & AI developers to contribute await! Let‘s join forces to enhance cancer diagnosis and treatment

Be the first to know and apply!

SAVE THE DATE
March 14, 10:00-11:30 aM CET

DISCOVER THE CANCER IMAGE EUROPE PLATFORM

TECHNICAL DEMONSTRATION WEBINAR

Explore the potential for AI-driven cancer care advancements!
Learn how to access and utilize our federated cancer image repository. The webinar is for AI Innovators & Data Providers interested in the platform and will feature an introduction to EUCAIM & Cancer Image Europe and a demonstration of data exploration & access.

Survey Invitation

Join Leading Experts In Shaping AI In Cancer

EUCAIM is looking for your feedback! We have recently published a Stakeholder Survey in order to reach out to potential end-users and stakeholders. We believe that your insights could significantly contribute to understanding the expectations of potential users and identifying the essential aspects that stakeholders find crucial for future engagement and collaboration with the platform.

Therefore, we would like to invite you to participate in the Stakeholder Survey about the Cancer Image Europe platform.

Completing the survey will take approximately 10 minutes. Your participation is crucial to the success of this project, and we deeply appreciate your expertise in shaping the future of cancer imaging and treatment.