Project

The increased availability of large-scale medical and high-resolution (single-cell) multi-omics data increases the value and the need for machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI) applications paving the path towards data-driven precision medicine. Yet, critical questions and challenges remain unanswered, such as how to effectively use single-cell patient data in clinical research across sites, ensuring data protection and privacy, assessing the generalizability and reliability of ML/AI applications, implementing these technologies in real-world clinical settings, monitoring model and data drifts, involving the public and patient groups, and addressing the social and ethical implications of medical AI. To address these vital aspects within the context of infectious diseases and pandemic preparedness, an interdisciplinary team of experts spanning fields from data and information sciences to immunology, virology, clinical infectious diseases, and ethics will collaborate. Leveraging high-resolution single-cell omics data and AI applications across multiple medical centers within Germany as well as with international partners across the world, the team will use the Swarm Learning (SL) principle, which is the first in its kind to combine AI and blockchain technology. SL guarantees highest standards in data protection and privacy by exchanging the concept of data sharing with insight sharing in multi-center studies, allowing ML/AI generalization across institutions, and testing of real-world application of AI under clinical conditions, while continuous learning approaches enable model- and data-drift detection in real time. Taken together, this consortium is expected to create a blueprint for the development of SL-enabled, AI-based diagnostic and prognostic tools by leveraging the combined power of high-dimensional clinical, immunological and single-cell multi-omics data from multiple clinical sites and cohorts, exemplified for infectious diseases, yet, expandable to any other medical field.

• Prof. Dr. Joachim Schultze

  Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative
  Erkrankungen e. V. (DZNE)
  Standort Bonn
  Systemmedizin
  Clinical Single Cell Omics
  Bonn
  

• Prof. Dr. Marylyn Martina Addo

  Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf
  Sektion Infektiologie
  Institut für Infektionsforschung und
  Impfstoffentwicklung
  Hamburg
  

• Prof. Dr. Alena Buyx

  Technische Universität München
  TUM School of Medicine and Health
  Institut für Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin
  München
  

• Prof. Dr. Susanne Herold, PhD

  Universität Gießen
  Universitätsklinikum Gießen und Marburg GmbH
  Infektiologie & Experimentelle Pneumologie
  Gießen
  

• Prof. Dr. Florian Klein

  Uniklinik Köln
  Centrum für Infektionsmedizin
  Institut für Virologie
  Köln
  

• Prof. Dr. Percy Knolle

  Technische Universität München
  Fakultät für Medizin
  Institut für Molekulare Immunologie
  München
  

• Prof. Dr. Leif Erik Sander

  Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin
  Fächerverb. Infektiologie, Pneumologie, Intensivm.
  Klinik für Infektiologie und Intensivmedizin
  Berlin
  

• Prof. Dr. Martina Sester

  Universität des Saarlandes
  Fakultät M (medizinische Fakultät)
  Zentrum für Infektionskrankheiten
  Abt.f. Transplantations- und Infektionsimmunologie
  Homburg
  

• Prof. Dr. Dr. Fabian Theis

  Helmholtz Zentrum München
  Deutsches Forschungszentrum für
  Gesundheit und Umwelt (GmbH)
  Institute of Computational Biology ICB
  Neuherberg
  

• Prof. Dr. Birgit Sawitzki

  Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin
  Berlin Institute of Health
  Center of Immunomics
  Berlin