"New research ideas welcome" was the motto two months ago. Because the current second funding period of the NUM ends on 30 June 2025, new research projects must be developed for the next third funding period. To this end, the process for developing project outlines for cooperative clinical research projects started on 1 July 2024. The aim of the new research projects is to use the Reseach Infrastructure established in the NUM for multicentre research and to further develop it structurally if necessary. The results should reach patients directly.
By 31 July, almost 100 project ideas had been developed by scientists in the NUM Hub's cooperation portal in six topic areas, each of which was assigned to a NUM call topic. Ideas from many different medical specialisms were represented. These initial project ideas resulted in 92 submitted abstracts, which were presented and discussed online to the NUM community in 10-minute pitches at the beginning of August. The pitches were recorded and can be viewed in the media centre of the cooperation portal (registration in the NUM Hub required).
In the subsequent voting process across the 37 participating academic medical centres, the abstracts per topic area were prioritised by the NUM community. Based on the distribution of votes in the voting process, consortia were found in each topic area that received the majority of votes. These six thematic area consortia are currently working on six project outlines, which will be submitted for international review by the German Aerospace Center - Project Management Agency in October:
- Thematic area 1: Further development of NUM Reseach Infrastructures
- Topic area 2: New specialist networks on intensive care medicine and stroke with special consideration of paediatric requirements
- Topic area 3: New studies on infections
- Topic area 4: Development of four registries
- Topic area 5: Expansion of the NUM platform for autopsy and pathology data (NATON)
- Topic area 6: Integration of eight use cases into the NUM platform for imaging data (RACOON)
A nice side effect: almost 1,800 new people have registered for the NUM Hub since the start of the process. This means that there are now more than 5,300 registered members. The number of visitors to the NUM website also increased in July and August by 143 per cent to 10,365 compared to the number of visits in May and June. The "New research ideas" subpage to accompany this process was accessed almost 4,000 times between 5 June and 30 August. This shows that the NUM calls for proposals have met with great interest in university medicine.