gms | German Medical Science

Background: HiGHmed [1] is one of four consortia funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the Medical Informatics Initiative aimed at strengthening of clinical and biomedical research to improve patient care. This can be achieved by enhancing data exchange and use between research and health care across different institutions. For this purpose, the HiGHmed consortium implements eight medical data integration centers (MeDICs). A major challenge in establishing MeDICs is the limited availability of specialists in this field. Within the HiGHmededucation program [2], the focus is therefore on concepts for education and further training to cover this demand for suitably qualified specialists. A further target is to inspire and support women for professions between medicine and computer science to recruit them as specialists and managers for the digital healthcare system. This should reduce the enormous under-representation of women in this field and especially as specialists and managers.

Objectives: Development and evaluation of concepts for empowering women at the interface between health and computer science by increasing their visibility and promoting their skills.

Methods: A concept for a summer school for women with workshops and podcasts has been developed by the HiGHmeducation working group “Women in Health and Computer Science” (WinHaCS). The chosen workshop topics consciously take up those aspects that are also addressed in various projects to promote women in STEM fields. They aim at teaching specific skills (self-presentation, negotiation strategies, and leadership skills) which women require in a strongly male-dominated work environment and as managers. The target groups of the workshops are female students and women at the beginning of their professional careers.

The podcast “DigitalisiergDerMedizin.de” [3] addresses a broad audience, but – unlike most podcasts in the context of health informatics – only women are interview partners. The episodes are intended to arouse interest in topics between medicine and computer science as well as to point out exciting professional fields and career paths.

Results: Under the direction of experienced coaches, three workshops were held in the summer of 2019. A total of 24 women from different areas between medicine and medical informatics took part in one or more workshops. The range of qualifications stretched from students to women already holding a doctorate. In the evaluation of each workshop, a total of eight aspects such as practical relevance, the fulfilment of expectations, learning success, etc. were assessed. The average overall rating of the workshops was 1.3 (scale from 1 (best) to 6).

Between April and September 2019, five episodes were published as part of the podcast “DigitalisierungDerMedizin.de”. The episodes have currently (2020 April 3) 6763 downloads.

Conclusion: The workshop topics met with great interest among the women already in the prearrangement. The aspects considered in the subsequent evaluation were rated on average as very good. Each woman stated that she would recommend the workshop to colleagues. In 2020, six additional podcast episodes are planned.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

The authors declare that an ethics committee vote is not required.