The NUM Study Network Critical Care (SN CritCare) has been officially launched with retroactive effect from February 2026. The aim is to improve research and care for critically ill patients with acute organ dysfunction - the failure of vital organs such as the brain, lungs, heart, liver or kidneys. SN CritCare brings together over 500 experts from all German academic medical centres for this purpose.
The official kick-off took place on 17 April 2026, digitally, with around 250 participants. The structure of the network, the specific tasks of the participating sites and the planned studies were presented. Particular attention was paid to the declaration of consent for patients who are acutely incapable of giving consent - a topic that requires special care in intensive care medicine.
What makes the Study Network Critical Care special
There are many questions in intensive care medicine that science has not yet been able to answer sufficiently. This is precisely where the Study Network Critical Care comes in: The network works on the basis of evidence gaps. It specifically identifies those clinical questions for which there are still no reliable answers and closes these gaps through randomised controlled trials (RCTs). In these RCTs, patients are randomly assigned to different treatment groups in order to fairly and reliably test which therapy works better. This results in findings that can be directly incorporated into the care of critically ill patients.
From the very beginning, SN CritCare has considered a group that is often neglected in intensive care research: children and newborns. The study network includes all age groups - from premature birth to old age. This is because acute organ dysfunction affects people of all ages and children and newborns in particular have different physiological requirements that need to be taken into account in diagnosis, treatment and study design. This is why paediatrics has been structurally embedded in the Study Network Critical Care as a separate cross-sectional module right from the start.
SN CritCare will keep you up to date on progress, results and developments in the network.
If you have any questions about the study network, please contact the following e-mail address: