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Institute for Biomedical Informatics

Committed to Education and Research Excellence

The Institute for Biomedical Informatics (BI-K) was founded at the Medical Faculty of the University of Cologne in 2021.

The mission of BI-K is to perform high quality basic and applied research in the field of Medical Data Science, as well as to promote excellence in education and training, and to contribute to the development of Medical Informatics as a core field for research and innovation in the cross roads of Medical and Health Sciences on the one side, and Computer and Information Sciences on the other side, while also integrating holistic perspectives that take into account social sciences and humanities.

Our research team has a long record of experience in conducting basic and applied research, and playing a leading role, in Germany, in Europe and internationally, for the proliferation of ethical, data-driven medical protocols and practices.

Medical informatics is a booster for research and innovation at the intersection of medicine and health sciences.
- Head of the Institute for Biomedical Informatics Oya Beyan Univ. Prof. Dr.

Shaping Innovation Through the Years

Since its founding, our institute has grown into a dynamic hub for interdisciplinary research. The following key milestones mark our journey.

2021

May 2021 → Official start of the Institute activities with our first acquired project FAIR Data Spaces funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
October 2021 → Our Institute joins the NFDI4DataScience and Artificial Intelligence project

2022

January 2022 → Our Institute joins the NFDI4Health project ‘National Research Data Infrastructure for Personal Health Data’
November 2022 → Our Institute offers for first time Studium Integrale courses on ‘Hands-On Data Science’ and ‘AI Ethics’ and a MedTech course for medical technology-based entrepreneurship and innovation for students of the Master on Health Economics

2023

January 2023 → Our first acquisition of a Horizon Europe project: the SHIFTHUB project aims to build a Smart Health Innovation & Future Technologies Hub
March 2023 → Our first Research Topic in Frontiers in Medicine is announced - it is about ‘Unlocking The Potential of Health Data Spaces With The Proliferation of New Tools, Technologies and Digital Solutions’
July 2023 → Our first article in Nature Scientific Data is published: ‘What prevents us from reusing medical real-world data in research’
July 2023 → Our Institute co-organizes and participates in the Open Science Festival #OSF2023DE held in Cologne with a panel on ‘Data rush in the wild: Real-life and Real-world data for research’

2024

January 2024 → Our first publication in ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data with an article about ‘Voxel-wise Medical Images Generalization for Eliminating Distribution Shift’

2025

October 2025 → Introduction of the 'AI in Medicine' seminars offered by the Institute for Biomedical Informatics on a continuous (weekly) basis and for every semester on emergent topics and applications of AI technologies in the field of medicine

2026

January 2026 → Start of the '3-year research project DICE-CD on 'Data Innovations in Collaborative Ecosystems for Clinical Domains' . The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space as part of the Use in data ecosystems: Competition – Communication – Cooperation (DigiNutzenDat)

Promoting medical data science and biomedical informatics as key areas for innovations in health research

We achieve this by 

  • blending cutting-edge computational methods with interdisciplinary medical research for a patient-centered approach.

  • incorporating multiple perspectives beyond medicine to social sciences and humanities to ensure real-world applicability of our outcomes and reduce translational barriers. 

  • keenly offering outstanding education and impactful theses to inspire and train the next generation of researchers.

Driving Innovation through Research

Cross-Discipline Collaboration

Collaborating across fields for comprehensive solutions

Research Innovation

Advancing new approaches in biomedical research

Practical Application

Research directly linked to practical healthcare needs

Educational Commitment

Supporting and training the next generation of researchers