List of Partners
16 different partners from medicine, science, business and IT law are involved in AVATAR-Transfer. Get to know all the partners here.
Audoora GmbH is a technology company in the hearing care industry and initiated the Hearing Health Network to systematically connect science, stakeholders, industry, and hearing care professionals, thereby laying the foundation for holistic, future-oriented hearing health care.
The Hearing Health Network, supported by Audoora GmbH, contributes its expertise in hearing acoustics and the development of digital solutions to AVATAR Transfer in order to collect health data in a structured manner and to make it usable for reliable data sets in hearing care. On this basis, AI-supported prediction models are developed and integrated into the AVATAR platform to predict therapy outcomes, optimize care processes, and enable new, personalized applications in hearing care.
Website: https://audoora.de/
The DLR Institute of Data Science in Jena brings together expertise in the field of application-oriented research that covers the entire data lifecycle. Starting with data acquisition and mobilization, its expertise extends to data management and processing, and finally to data analysis.
For AVATAR-Transfer, the institute is building on empirical findings on influencing factors and incentives for data donation from the predecessor project AVATAR, as well as on experience in the design and development of data trust models from the TrustNShare project. These are to be combined in the development of practicable design options for dynamic consent in the transfer areas. Furthermore, in the predecessor project AVATAR, the institute developed methodologies and tools for security and data protection analyses, which provide an ideal basis for the higher requirements in AVATAR-Transfer and are to be further developed there in terms of usability and automatability.
Website: www.dlr.de/de
eemagine has been an established player in the neurotech industry since 1999, helping companies successfully bring products to market through engineering, quality assurance, and software development. The company provides innovative solutions for neuroscience and neurodiagnostics to clinical and scientific customers worldwide.
eemagine's overarching goal in the project is to make collected EEG data available for secondary use in research and healthcare in an anonymous and controlled manner, taking into account patient sovereignty over their data, together with associated modalities such as stimulation data, neuronavigation, fMRI, MEG, etc. Biomarkers and annotations of the data are also to be included. To achieve this goal, suitable interfaces and technologies are being developed with partners to share anonymized data and control the distribution process. Furthermore, methods are also being developed to remove patient-related characteristics from the EEG data and insert watermarks, while non-personal data remains largely unchanged.
Website: https://www.eemagine.com/
The University of Applied Sciences in Jena primarily contributes to applied research and development. Its research focuses on precision systems, technologies and materials, health and sustainability as well as digitalization as an overarching topic.
At the EAH, AVATAR-Transfer is being supported from a social science and engineering perspective. The social science part examines how health data is communicated in society and how it is transformed into economic goods. From an engineering perspective, a potential analysis is being carried out on data sources that will be relevant in the future, e.g., from wearables or (tele)medical care centers. Aspects of data security and confidentiality are also being considered. Another focus of the EAH is on promoting digital health literacy and accompanying science communication.
Website: www.eah-jena.de
At the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau, everything revolves around the secure and efficient AI-based recognition and classification of audio and video data. This includes solutions for monitoring industrial production processes, environmental monitoring and identifying manipulations in audio data. The institute also researches and develops processes for data security and technical data protection, such as the anonymization of audio data. Another focus is the development of 3D audio technologies for use in the live and event sector.
In AVATAR-Transfer, Fraunhofer IDMT develops new methods to protect personal data as best as possible, which includes providing modern anonymization methods as easy-to-use services. This involves combining, configuring, and providing a wide range of methods (e.g., fully homomorphic encryption, differential privacy, federated learning) tailored to specific use cases. In addition, the institute is researching the evaluation and measurability of personal references in various types of data in the context of post-market surveillance of medical devices, as well as ways to track the distribution of biosignal data by adding watermarks.
Website: www.idmt.fraunhofer.de
The Applied Systems Technology (AST) branch of Fraunhofer IOSB develops systems engineering solutions for complex, dynamic and time-variant processes that are used in a wide range of application areas such as energy and water supply, cyber security, land and underwater robotics and data rooms.
In AVATAR-Transfer, Fraunhofer IOSB-AST develops data space concepts based on the specifications of the International Data Space Association (IDSA) for the secure and sovereign exchange of sensitive health data between various stakeholders. EDC connectors with usage and access control mechanisms are used to technically enforce usage guidelines. Privacy-enhancing technologies such as differential privacy, encryption, and secure federated learning are integrated directly into the platform architecture. The development is based on Gaia-X/IDS principles and is implemented as a modular, auditable AVATAR-Transfer platform for medical data rooms.
Website: www.iosb-ast.fraunhofer.de
Friedrich Schiller University Jena is a university in Thuringia that is rich in tradition and strong in research. With around 18,000 students, it offers a wide range of courses in the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences.
In AVATAR, scientists from the Program Analysis and Optimization working group (Institute of Computer Science at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science) are investigating description languages for system and software architectures for federated systems such as the AVATAR system. The aim is to compare quality requirements and system architecture and to generate statements about the achievability of the requirements. The basis for this is a formal specification of the system components and interfaces as well as the quality requirements. Based on the primarily architecturally and structurally created system design, the behavior of the federated system is to be examined and simulated in more detail. These investigations provide the identification of neuralgic system components and interfaces for the flow paths in typical system use.
Website: www.uni-jena.de
The InfectoGnostics Research Campus is a Thuringian network for innovative diagnostics and infection research organized as a public-private partnership. At the research campus, more than 30 partners from science, medicine and industry are developing novel molecular biological and photonic methods for the detection of pathogens and antibiotic resistance. As a Thuringian innovation cluster for diagnostics and biotechnology, InfectoGnostics supports the regional economy, especially SMEs and start-ups.
AVATAR-Transfer is coordinated by InfectoGnostics in collaboration with Navimatix GmbH. In the project, InfectoGnostics contributes its expertise in infection diagnostics and the handling of highly sensitive health data, coordinates the continued development of the living lab and the AVATAR platform, as well as strengthens scientific communication and transfer to clinical and industrial applications via the Open Science Lab.
Website: www.infectognostics.de
The ‘terzo-Institut für angewandte Gehörforschung’ (terzo institute for applied hearing research) is part of ISMA AG, which was founded in 2001. Its interdisciplinary team combines various specialist skills in the field of hearing health. Terzo has developed the terzo hearing therapy, which has been in use since 2006, helping people with hearing loss and tinnitus to quickly regain their best possible hearing health.
ISMA contributes its extensive experience in patient-centered hearing rehabilitation and practice-oriented data collection to the AVATAR-Transfer project. ISMA focusses on providing clinically validated data, integrating it into AI-supported prognosis models, and evaluating therapy progress as a basis for innovative approaches in hearing healthcare.
Website: terzo-institut.de
Jen-Ophthalmo has more than 30 years of experience with medical technology in the field of ophthalmology. Founded in 1991 by Frank Sittig and taken over by businessman Thomas Köhler in 2017, the company stands for expertise in the planning, equipping and organization of new ophthalmology practices and opticians' stores. Jen-Ophthalmo is also a long-standing member of the industry association medways.
Jen-Ophthalmo contributes its ophthalmological expertise and industry knowledge to the AVATAR-Transfer project. The aim of the subproject is to create synthetic images for ophthalmological devices for training and sales purposes, but also for ophthalmological rehabilitation and teaching. To this end, images of the eye, iris, and fundus with physiological and pathophysiological features are being recorded in a small clinical study. These images form the basis for synthetically generated images, which are then evaluated by experts in terms of their practical relevance.
Website: www.jen-ophthalmo.de
Liebenstein Law is a law firm specializing in digitalization and data protection law, which advises its clients in the field of intellectual property such as licensing and IT law, trademark law and competition law. The chancery also specializes in data protection law and data protection management. In data protection, the Liebenstein Law's lawyers advise, for example, on cloud applications and platform designs in the healthcare sector as well as the transfer of healthcare data to third countries.
In AVATAR Transfer, Liebenstein Law researches and classifies the new legal landscape and the requirements of national and European law, translating them into practical, legally compliant processes. This enables the platform to make health data available for research and the development of modern medical devices in accordance with data protection regulations.
Website: www.liebenstein-law.de
As an industry association for medical technology/biotechnology and an experienced coordinator of large publicly funded projects, medways e.V. represents interests of the industry in Thuringia. Medways has extensive expertise in the regulatory area and in quality management, with which it advises companies in the field of clinical trials and post-market surveillance. The association currently has 91 members.
In AVATAR-Transfer, medways contributes the perspective and requirements of the healthcare industry in various use cases, examines which business models and markets arise from the use of anonymized data, and works with its partners in medical technology to ensure the transferability of the developed approaches to the areas of application.
Website: www.medways.eu
Navimatix stands for innovative software development. For over 15 years, the company has been characterized by its particular strength in the development, maintenance and support of distributed, scalable and highly available software solutions. The entire software life cycle is covered - from conception and architecture to implementation, operation & maintenance and further development of the software solutions. The sectors in which Navimatix is active include the automotive industry, transportation & logistics, medical technology and optics.
Navimatix coordinates the project in collaboration with the InfectoGnostics Research Campus with a strong focus on the technical implementation. This includes the continuous development of the AVATAR platform for the anonymized provision of personal health data. Navimatix contributes its experience in the field of microservice architectures and distributed systems, its expertise in the secure and reliable handling of large amounts of data (big data), and the setup of data rooms.
Website: www.navimatix.de
The Wald-Klinikum Gera is part of SRH - a leading provider of education and healthcare services with 17,000 employees. SRH operates private universities, educational centers, schools and hospitals. The SRH Wald-Klinikum Gera is a modern maximum care hospital with circa 1,000 patient beds and an academic teaching hospital of the University Hospital Jena. The 26 specialist departments, institutes and 23 certified centers cover almost the entire spectrum of medical services. A network of medical care centers, a hospice, a rehabilitation center and a center for clinical studies complete the range of services.
The Center for Clinical Studies at SRH Wald-Klinikum Gera contributes its medical and scientific expertise to AVATAR-Transfer. In this joint project, research tasks relating to the collection and evaluation of real and synthetic data as well as the planning and implementation of clinical studies are undertaken, and the perspective of data use is further developed. Subprojects in the field of hearing health, neurology and ophthalmology are being researched in close cooperation with the project partners. Key research questions concern the possibilities of secondary data use for research, development, approval and quality assurance in medical care, which are being answered in close coordination with legal project partners, taking into account regulatory and data protection requirements.
Website: www.waldklinikumgera.de
The Ilmenau University of Technology is a university of the Free State of Thuringia in Ilmenau. Research and teaching at the university have a strong engineering focus and are closely linked to economics and natural sciences, mathematics and the media.
The Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Informatics at the Technical University of Ilmenau researches and develops technology-oriented methods and systems for the early detection, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of medical conditions. In the AVATAR transfer project, the institute is researching methods for anonymizing complex biosignals, in particular electroencephalograms (EEG), which potentially contain patterns for re-identifying individuals. The new methods serve to prevent re-identification between data from electronic patient records, research data sets, home applications, and cloud services, enabling the secure sharing of medical measurement data for research, quality assurance, and product improvement.
Website: www.tu-ilmenau.de
With 27 clinics and 25 institutes, Jena University Hospital is the largest employer in the region. It treats 300,000 in-house and ambulatory patients every year and teaches 2,600 students of medicine, dentistry and biosciences. The UKJ combines its clinical and biomedical basic research with partners such as the Leibniz Center for Photonics in Infection Research, the German Center for Mental Health and the DLR Institute for Data Science in numerous collaborations.
The subproject of the Institute for Medical Statistics, Informatics, and Data Sciences builds on the anonymization and secure deep learning methods developed in the first funding phase. The methods are used specifically in hearing health, ophthalmological rehabilitation, and the evaluation of medical time series data. The aim is to make valuable patient data securely usable—for example, to better predict the course of therapy, to provide individualized rehabilitation support, or to evaluate measurement data in compliance with data protection regulations.
The CaSe working group at the Institute for Infectious Medicine and Hospital Hygiene supports the use case for anonymizing infection data with its extensive experience in sequencing technologies and research in the field of antibiotic resistance. It is developing an anonymization tool for integrating sequence data into clinical and scientific workflows.
Website: www.uniklinikum-jena.de