Original article
In the cover interview with "Monitor Versorgungsforschung" (Health Services Research Monitor), Prof. Dr. Jörg Meerpohl, Director of Cochrane Germany, describes how Cochrane, like the entire methodology community, is constantly evolving. The GRADE approach plays a key role in this development, primarily used in systematic reviews to assess the best available evidence for a given outcome. Meerpohl and his team are also working on this approach in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, reviewing, structuring, and evaluating the available study evidence. Here, the entire community—including Cochrane—needs and wants to become faster than before, because, as Meerpohl states, "the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the focus, and that's a good thing.".
01.02.2021
The corona pandemic has been the dominant topic for the German healthcare system since the beginning of 2020. Data bases such as registers and reporting procedures had to be created for health care research issues. Alternatively, the routine data collected on a legal basis can be used to gain insights into health care during the pandemic. For this purpose, the Quality Indicators for Church Hospitals – QKK eV association defined 18 key figures on Covid-19 and used them for evaluations of the first half of 2020. These provide an overview of the care of affected patients in small and medium-sized church-run hospitals. The proportion of patients with Covid-19 among all inpatient treatment cases in the period examined was 0.47%. Of these patients, 17.77% died in hospital. Around 30% of patients with Covid-19 were treated in intensive care units, and a fifth of patients with Covid-19 were ventilated. This means that smaller and medium-sized hospitals were also widely affected by the corona pandemic. The hospitals had to provide maximum therapy options for these patients. Compared to other studies, differences emerged in which structural conditions may be important.
07.12.2020
The significantly increasing proportion of positive test results to now over 2.5% indicates that the epidemic has spread widely among the population. As the group of authors expressed in its ad hoc statement on the occasion of the results of the Chancellor/Prime Minister Conference on October 14, 2020, the political leadership would have been called upon, on the one hand, to begin a discussion process with positive connotations instead of an ever-perpetuated threat scenario, how general prevention measures can be combined with specific measures and, on the other hand, what an adequate testing strategy should look like. All of this with the aim of achieving specific prevention as the basis for “stable control” of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic.
07.12.2020
Every second patient with hepatitis C knows nothing about their disease and is not treated, even though there are a number of promising therapies. Researchers at IQVIA show that artificial intelligence could close this gap. They developed an algorithm to identify people at high risk of HCV based on patient data.
07.12.2020
Die Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) war 1962 die erste Universitätsneugründung in der Bundesrepublik, mit aktuell immerhin zehn Fakultäten, darunter die Medizinische Fakultät, u.a. mit der Abteilung für Allgemeinmedizin. Die Anfänge der RUB-Allgemeinmedizin reichen mehr als 25 Jahre zurück. Was zunächst als kleiner Lehrbereich begann, wurde im Laufe der Jahre zu einer eigenständigen Abteilung, die zunehmend auch Projekte in der Versorgungsforschung realisiert. Mit der Neubesetzung des Lehrstuhls durch Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Horst Christian Vollmar wurde im Jahr 2018 die Forschung neu aufgestellt und strategisch auf vier Herausforderungen fokussiert.
07.12.2020
Nearly 5,000 scientists and healthcare professionals have now co-signed the so-called "John Snow Memorandum" on Covid-19, which was published in the journal "The Lancet" on October 10, 2020, and is also available on the online portal of the memorandum of the same name. In this highly compelling statement, the authors call for "clear communication about the risks posed by Covid-19 and effective strategies to combat them," but vehemently warn against "infection-acquired population immunity" that would lead to a low-risk population. This, according to the authors of the memorandum, is "a dangerous fallacy that is not supported by scientific evidence." Two significant contributions from Germany support this international initiative: a statement from the Society for Virology (GfV) and a statement from the group of authors led by Prof. Dr. med. Matthias Schrappe, who, on the occasion of the conference of the Federal Chancellor with the Minister-Presidents of the Länder on 14 October 2020, supplemented her six position papers published in „Monitor Versorgungsforschung“ with an „urgent ad-hoc statement“.
07.12.2020
The “Primary Care Congress” (PVK), which was also well received by the Austrian public media, took place for the 5th time this year - this time, of course, completely online and free of charge. Once again organized by the Institute for General Medicine and Evidence-Based Health Care Research (IAMEV) at the Medical University of Graz together with the Austrian Forum for Primary Care (OEFOP), this congress has long been established in the Austrian healthcare event landscape due to the dimensions of Corona and the great importance for it Primary care is dealing with the corona pandemic. The topic: “Primary care in times of a pandemic”. The congress program offered a mix of international/national keynotes, sessions on practical experiences and healthcare-relevant topics for practice, as well as live webinars with the opportunity for discussion for all online participants.
07.12.2020
Das im Auftrag des Spitzenverbands Bund der Krankenkassen (GKV-Spitzenverband) vom Prognos-Institut erstellte Gutachten zum „Stand der klinischen Krebsregistrierung zum 31.12.2019“ erntet Kritik. „Das Gutachten beruht ausschließlich auf Angaben aus den Erfüllungsberichten der Krebsregister, die von den jeweiligen Landeskrankenkassen zur Verfügung gestellt wurden. Externe Experten wurden bei der Evaluation der Daten nicht hinzugezogen und auch die klinischen Krebsregister selbst, wie in der Vergangenheit üblich, wurden nicht gehört“, rügt Prof. Dr. Monika Klinkhammer-Schalke, Vorstandsvorsitzende der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Tumorzentren (ADT). Es sei fraglich, ob die Kassen angesichts ihres unmittelbaren Interessenkonflikts die notwendige Unabhängigkeit für die Bewertung der Leistungen der Klinischen Krebsregister besäßen.
07.12.2020
Für den medizinischen Fortschritt werden Gesundheitsdaten immer wichtiger. Die Nutzung von Gesundheitsdaten ist hierzulande jedoch stark eingeschränkt – und bewegt sich in Deutschland im Spannungsfeld von gewünschten Innovationen und der informationellen Selbstbestimmung der Bürger. Gerade jetzt braucht es einen politischen Schub für eine stärkere Nutzung der Daten in Deutschland. Warum ist dies wichtig und welchen Mehrwert haben Patienten, Kostenträger, Leistungserbringer und Industrie, wenn sie anonymisierte oder pseudonymisierte Gesundheitsdaten aus dem Alltag – sogenannte Real-World-Data – nutzen dürfen? Diese und weitere Fragen diskutierten Vertreter aus Politik, Wirtschaft und Verwaltung im Rahmen der Vorstellung der neuen Analyse der BDI-Initiative Gesundheit digital zur Nutzung von Gesundheitsdaten in Versorgung, Forschung und Entwicklung.
07.12.2020
Although completed in November 2019, the report “International data bases for health care research” prepared on behalf of the Central Institute for Statutory Health Care in Germany (Zi) was only published at the end of September this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The topic is now and especially with regard to Covid-19 explosive, because in this international comparative study, the health economist Prof. Dr. Reinhard Busse (TU Berlin) and his team are investigating how the data basis in Germany could be improved: There is still a lot of room for improvement!