Scientifically sound preparation is crucial for effective and coordinated action in a pandemic. It allows action to be taken in the first critical phase. The spread of a pathogen must quickly contained, the risk to the population assessed and the healthcare system with a view with a view to supply capacities capacities and impending burdens and upcoming burdens. In order to be in the best possible position, a programme is now being of the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the University Hospitals of Cologne, Göttingen and Bonn, the establishment of a platform for Surveillance and Rapid Response (NUM-SAR) in the Network University Medicine (NUM), funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space.
The past pandemic has shown that rapid and coordinated action is crucial in an exceptional situation. The NUM was established in 2020 to coordinate COVID-19 research in German university medicine. Over the next five years, the NUM-SAR project will create further structures that will enable a rapid response - including a specialised laboratory network and evidence-based action plans for pandemic situations.
The public health system is initially responsible for the immediate response to a pandemic situation. The first reliable data and expertise usually come from cutting-edge medical care, which is spread across various university locations. Comprehensive preparation of university medicine in advance significantly increases the healthcare system's ability to act. Practised procedures, rapid provision of diagnostics, monitoring and sustainable data structures play a key role in this. With NUM-SAR, a comprehensive research and data infrastructure is now being created in close cooperation with the German Society of Virology (GfV) and the Robert Koch-Institute (RKI).
A nationwide network of 23 specialised university laboratories and clinical expertise in virology is being established as part of this process. The platform is intended to strengthen the research and diagnosis of different virus groups and ensure that new pathogens are recognised at an early stage. "With this broad-based expertise, we can react immediately in the event of a pandemic, develop tests and support research," says Prof Christian Drosten, Director of the Institute of Virology at Charité.
Science-led pandemic management
Over the coming years, the researchers will develop evidence-based principles for action based on interdisciplinary research findings that are already available. "In various working groups, experts can very quickly tap into methodological and clinical expertise on different issues as needed and thus strengthen science-led pandemic management," explains Prof Nicole Skoetz, Director of theInstitute of Public Health at the University of Cologne.
Another focus is a comprehensive concept for monitoring and surveillance of the burden on the healthcare system. It will record infectious medicine parameters as well as indicators from the areas of hygiene and hospital hygiene, quality of care, patient safety, employee health and stress, and inpatient care. Together with the Robert Koch-Institute, researchers at University Medicine are also further developing the modern, integrated platform for genomic pathogen surveillance (GenSurv). It enables a faster and more reliable epidemiological assessment of bacterial and viral pathogens. The Director of the Institute of Hygiene and Infectiology at the University Medical Centre Göttingen, Prof. Simone Scheithauer, emphasises: "The data will be made available to the Robert Koch-Institute and the public health system to assess the health situation. Through the work in NUM-SAR, infection prevention and control interlock like cogwheels."
Last but not least, the University Hospital Bonn is coordinating the further development of the NUM dashboard, which enables access to pandemic-relevant, near-real-time analyses of care data directly from the hospital information systems of the partner sites. The technical basis for this will be the distributed IT infrastructure of the Data Integration Centres (DIZ) in the NUM. "The NUM dashboard makes it possible to gain a broader, faster and more precise picture of the care situation," explains Prof Sven Zenker, Medical Director of the Medical-Scientific Technology Development and Coordination Unit at the University Hospital Bonn.
NUM-SAR complements the Reseach Infrastructure at NUM with methodological expertise, evidence processing and research data in the field of pandemic preparedness. It enables rapid access to reliable health data, efficient laboratories and interdisciplinary networks, thus ensuring the ability to act in the event of a pandemic.