Preface

The 63rd Annual Conference of the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS) builds upon the motto “The Learning Health System: research based, innovative, connecting” and herewith highlights the unique combination of disciplines under the roof of GMDS and their contribution to a Learning Health System (LHS): medical informatics, biometry, epidemiology, medical bioinformatics, systems biology and health data management. This volume witnesses the breadth of these contributions and demonstrates their input to the learning circle of an LHS from data to knowledge, knowledge to performance and finally performance to data

Friedman CP, Rubin JC, Sullivan KJ. Toward an Information Infrastructure for Global Health Improvement. Yearb Med Inform. 2017;26:16–23.

. The German national medical informatics initiative fuels research on how integrated large amounts of data can be processed to become knowledge and how performance related data are fed back into the circle. Biometry, epidemiology, bioinformatics and medical informatics provide the research methods and innovative algorithms to turn data into knowledge. Although these thoughts have accompanied biomedical and health research for many decades, the new vision about an LHS is the systematic and large scale feedback loop between science and practice: the virtuous circle of learning. It gives research a new momentum towards better patient care.

In light of an LHSit is clear that digitised healthcare is not an aim in itself but a must and an instrument to ultimately serve the patient.

Yet, there is still so much to learn about a Learning Health System. Exchange with colleagues from within Europe and from abroad is essential to obtain new insights. This idea guided our motivation to invite dedicated international guests to the conference to give keynote speeches and introductions to workshops. It also guided our intention to carry on the undertaking of an open call for full papers in English, a two stage peer review process and the publication of accepted papers in the Series Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, which was initially established for GMDS2017 in Oldenburg. It allows the authors to present their achievements to an international audience, also beyond the GMDS Annual Conference. In addition, full papers in German are published in the open access journal German Medical Science – Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (MIBE) and abstracts in German or English by German Medical Science via www.egms.de.

This volume embraces 38 full papers out of the total of 164 oral presentations and 65 posters of this year's GMDS conference. The papers are sorted alphabetically by the topic of the session they were presented in.

We wish to thank all colleagues who submitted their work to the conference and particularly those who submitted full papers. We are grateful to the many reviewers who dedicated their time and knowledge to make this congress possible.

GMDS2018 takes place in Osnabrück on the site of the HealthCampus, an institution founded by the two local universities that brings together major regional hospitals and health and social care institutions to form an emerging Learning Health System. It is meant to build up trust and stimulate the dialogue between science and practice.

With this in mind, GMDS2018 adds another building block to establishing LHS inspired virtuous circles of learning.

Ursula Hübner

Ulrich Sax

Hans-Ulrich Prokosch

Bernhard Breil

Harald Binder

Antonia Zapf

Brigitte Strahwald

Tim Beißbarth

Niels Grabe

Anke Schöler