New heads in the executive board of the AWMF
18.11.2021 15:05
Professor Dr. med. At the last delegate meeting of the member societies, Rolf-Detlef Treede became the new president of the Association of Scientific Medical Societies. V. (AWMF) elected. Also new to the executive board is Professor Dr. med. Fred Zepp as deputy chairman and Professor Dr. rer. nat. Renate Deinzer as another member of the executive board. One concern of the new Executive Committee is to further advance the digitization of guideline knowledge in the coming years. In the future, this expert knowledge should not only be available in apps and digital devices, but should also be more closely integrated into political decision-making processes.
Professor Dr. Rolf-Detlef Treede succeeds Professor Dr. Rolf Kreienberg. Treede holds the Chair of Neurophysiology at the Mannheim Medical Faculty at Heidelberg University and has been a member of the AWMF Executive Board since 2006. Digitalization in the healthcare system and in particular guideline knowledge is of particular concern to the doctor - not least because he also studied computer science for several years. In doing so, he relies on the now well-established cooperation between the specialist societies, the G-BA and other players in the healthcare system.
The guidelines coordinated by the AWMF contain the collected findings of scientific medicine. In order to make this knowledge available in the future as a basis for digital health applications such as apps, doctor information systems or information offerings on platforms, the AWMF is implementing a comprehensive concept for the digitization of guideline knowledge. To this end, she is currently developing a guideline portal that will show the entire life cycle of the guideline. The concrete application of the guideline portal is scheduled to start in 2022.
“Digitization in the healthcare system is currently affecting all areas of medicine, which is why close cooperation between the AWMF and politics and other healthcare institutions is essential. This is the only way we can ensure that early detection, diagnostics and therapy as well as training, further education and training are evidence-based,” emphasizes Treede. As part of its delegate conference, the AWMF therefore met with the head of the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM), Professor Dr. Karl Broich discussed the opportunities and challenges of digitalization and discussed the role of scientific medical societies in this. For example, digital health applications must also undergo an examination at the BfArM. “The quality of health apps and the benefit to patients are high when the knowledge behind them is evidence-based. The guideline knowledge of the AWMF, which will be available digitally and interoperably in the future, will make a decisive contribution to this,” says Treede.
As the new deputy president of the AWMF, Professor Dr. Fred Zepp, pediatrician from Mainz and previous member of the AWMF Executive Committee. “It is time for our country to switch to an orderly, rational and scientifically based mode of action when dealing with the pandemic, which the specialist societies organized in the AWMF can competently support,” said Zepp, who is also a member of the Standing Vaccination Commission and is involved in the creation of the COVID-19 related guidelines. The delegates elected the psychologist Professor Dr. Renate Deinzer from Gießen, who, as a new member of the executive board, strengthens the AWMF's positioning on science, interdisciplinarity and speaking medicine. With the newly elected Executive Committee, the AWMF is well positioned for the upcoming tasks of the future. The deputy president Professor Dr. Dr. Henning Schliephake and the other members of the Executive Committee did not stand for election according to rotation and therefore remain in their offices.