The Network University Medicine (NUM) was established in April 2020 to coordinate clinical COVID-19 research at university hospitals in Germany. All 37 university medicine sites in Germany are members of the NUM. It is funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR).
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the necessary platforms were largely lacking to collect, store and utilise treatment data and biological samples in a structured manner across a large number of hospitals for research purposes. Consequently, within the NUM, research and data infrastructures were either established from scratch or existing infrastructures were integrated and further expanded.
A key task of the NUM today is to make these Research Infrastructures (“platforms”) permanently available to researchers and to continuously develop them further – including for many other research areas beyond COVID research. This includes the expansion towards a Germany-wide data repository for all types of clinical research data: from information such as patients’ dates of birth to details of medical history or laboratory test results. The Research Infrastructures are utilised and tested through studies. NUM’s research projects are clinically oriented and aim to generate findings with immediate practical relevance, in order to provide better care for patients or to manage major public health crises more effectively. The Research Infrastructures and the data available through them – derived from studies and routine care – are widely available to the scientific community for use.