What brought you to the NUM?
My work as a research assistant at the Institute for Medical Data Science at the University Hospital Würzburg brought me to NUM. I had already gained a brief insight into the NUM during my Master's degree, which is why I was particularly looking forward to working in the network. I started as a site coordinator for the NAPKON-SÜP study at the Würzburg site and in the area of methodological consulting in the Epidemiology Core Unit (now the NUM Methods Hub). In the course of time, further activities were added in various areas of the NUM (site coordination NAPKON-POP / RAPID-REVIVE). We have already been able to successfully utilise the established structures for further projects at NUM. Last year, I was able to contribute to the NUM study network in the planning and establishment of the initial contact point and local contact point at the UKW and took over the operational management of the local contact point at the Würzburg site. I am very much looking forward to future developments in the NUM and especially in the NUM Study Network.
What was the biggest success in your NUM research project?
My greatest personal success to date is the publication of a paper in which we have also implemented the post-COVID severity score developed in the NAPKON-POP cohort for the NAPKON-SÜP cohort. We also won a poster prize for this at NAPKON.Vention 2024. We are currently in the process of publishing another paper in which we take a closer look at functional aspects related to post-COVID in the NAPKON-SÜP and -HAP cohorts. We are the first to analyse the pooled data from both cohorts. Further analyses in the area of post-COVID are already being planned. I was also involved in over ten other papers based on the NUM data in various roles.
What are the arguments in favour of conducting research together rather than in competition with each other?
We all know how limited and competitive research funding is. It is not surprising that competition arises here. Competition leads to positive development and innovation in many areas in order to survive on the market. However, collaboration has enormous advantages, especially in research. Working together creates synergies that are easily lost in a purely competitive environment. Together, we have a much greater wealth of knowledge at our disposal. The exchange of different perspectives enables us to conduct studies more efficiently and to recognise and avoid potential pitfalls at an early stage. Together, we are building structures that allow us to establish studies faster, recruit patients more quickly and generate larger, higher-quality data sets. The NUM has given young researchers in particular many opportunities to exchange ideas with experienced colleagues and gain experience in large research projects. I therefore see it as a great success of the NUM to have brought together the German university hospitals and other players in the healthcare system and to jointly advance clinical and clinical epidemiological research in Germany.
Tell us a technical term from your job that sounds exciting and only the real experts understand! What does the term mean?
Even though the term has been used in the NUM for some time, many people are still unclear what it actually means: primary coding.
The primary coding of study data is intended to create standardised terminology as well as coding and grouping across the various studies in the NUM and thus increase the comparability of the studies with each other. To this end, we provide documents for each study in which we show the necessary data items, including their original coding, and which "new" coding or grouping we would envisage.
To make the researchers' work easier and also save time, we have developed an R package that carries out the primary coding automatically. This can be used even if you have little or no knowledge of R (= a statistics programme). We have created a short script that allows everyone to read in the data and export it to a format of their choice.
We started with primary coding for the NAPKON cohorts in the NUM-MB, but are now expanding this service for other studies as well. The latest version also includes primary coding for the RAPID-REVIVE study and the NUM Infection Study Network. In the NAPCODE project, we are also working on harmonising the NAPKON cohorts (and other cohorts in the future) and transferring them to a joint post-COVID dataset. We will use epicodr for this purpose and may also develop it further.
What was your career aspiration as a child and why?
I have wanted to work in the medical field since I was a child. I used to want to be a doctor. I wanted to help people stay healthy or get healthy again. Even though this is an absolutely exciting and important profession, I decided to pursue a career in health science during a voluntary year in geriatric care. However, when I started my Bachelor's degree in Health Economics and Policy, I would never have thought that I would end up in research. I was able to gain my first experience in the field of research and statistics in particular through a semester-long research project during my bachelor's degree in Fulda and I stuck with it. During my Master's degree in Medical Process Management in Erlangen, I then had the opportunity to work on research projects at the Institute of General Practice. Here I worked intensively on a project investigating the side effects of the COVID-19 vaccination. With my employment at the Institute of Clinical Epidemiology and Biometry and later at the Institute of Medical Data Science in Würzburg, I was able to stay involved in COVID research and was allowed to participate in the NUM. I can continue to pursue my fundamental goal of helping people's health here, albeit not in the way I imagined as a child. But that's not a bad thing. On the contrary. I really enjoy my work and it is at least as important.