The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding a new research project with eight million euros. The focus is on children after high-risk births, older people and people suffering from cancer.
Children born at risk, patients suffering from cancer and elderly people - they all belong to groups with special medical needs and will therefore be the focus of researchers at University Medicine Oldenburg (UMO) in the coming years. Funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research with almost 8 million euros, as part of the "Intersectoral Care of Vulnerable Groups (INGVER)" project, they are researching approaches to improve healthcare for these patients in particular.
"These patients often have to deal with special problems - whether they have several concomitant illnesses at the same time, are at an increased risk of mental and chronic complaints, experience a shared burden on the family or have an increased need for care," explains Prof Dr Hans Gerd Nothwang, Dean of School V - School of Medicine and Health Sciences. "It is therefore important to us to comprehensively investigate these particularities and improve the care of these people here in the region."
The researchers see great potential in approaches that can overcome the boundaries between the three sectors of the healthcare system - outpatient care, inpatient treatment and rehabilitation services. Patients are often treated in facilities from several sectors without effective collaboration between the treating parties. This is why the researchers now want to set up a diagnostics and data integration centre, among other things, in which the health data collected from patients from the various sectors will flow together. The relevant data will then be available to all experts involved in the treatment process and can be incorporated into personalised treatment plans. Other sub-projects are focussing on individual aspects of the three patient groups.
The project combines clinical research with healthcare research. Numerous university hospitals and institutes of the UMO cooperation hospitals as well as departments of Health Services Research are involved.
