The OFFIS Institute for Information Technology (http://www.offis.de/), founded in 1991, is an application-oriented non-profit research and development institute related to the Computer Science department of the University of Oldenburg in Lower Saxony, north-western Germany. Its primary mission is to adopt the findings from university basic research in computer science and other relevant disciplines, to stay in touch with new market demands through its many years of experience in co-operation projects with the industry, and to bridge the gap between “basic research” and “application demands” through application-oriented research. By 2006, third party funding ratio reached the amount of 79% of the total yearly research budget of some 10.8 M€. With this ratio, OFFIS has a top ranking both among the other institutes in Lower Saxony as well as nation-wide. OFFIS staff currently counts about 190 employees. More than a hundred scientists (in their vast majority computer scientists, but also engineers, economists, physicists and from other disciplines as well) work in interdisciplinary teams. OFFIS focuses its R&D activities in three challenging application areas: Health, Energy and Traffic.
The OFFIS “Health” R&D division, which participates to the iCARDEA project, addresses a broad range of research topics related to the use of information technology related to health and healthcare, including medical device technologies, integration technology, data analysis technologies and human machine interfaces. In the field of data analysis, projects focus on the use of healthcare data for public health purposes such as epidemiological cancer registries, automatic reporting systems for contagious diseases, data cleansing and quality indicator management systems, cohort studies, but also for quality assured data integration in the electronic health record. A core component in many of these projects is OFFIS' Multidimensional Statistical Data Analysis Engine (MUSTANG) platform, which enables the development of specialized analytical information systems for healthcare. These information systems are based on an integrated, application oriented data warehouse, support the inclusion of geographical data and provide comprehensive support for typical analysis tasks such as ad-hoc queries, explorative data analyses, systematical monitoring, quality assurance and automatic report generation.

Tasks attributed and relevant prior experience
In the iCARDEA project, OFFIS is primarily responsible for the development components for context awareness and the derivation of clinically useful information derivation. As described above, data mining is one of the key research topics of the Data Analysis Technologies research group within the OFFIS “Health” R&D division. Related prior projects (see www.offis.de/ig/projekte/index_e.php) are: MUSTANG, CARLOS, AIM+, BQS-QIMS, CLIQ, EPAQ and GEBKONRW.

• MUSTANG (Multidimensional Statistical Data Analysis Engine, www.offis.de/projekte/g/81/ mustang_e.php) is a long-term research project of the OFFIS Institute for Information Technology working on a platform for the development of specialized analytical information systems for healthcare. These information systems are based on an integrated, application oriented data warehouse, support the inclusion of geographical data and provide comprehensive support for typical analysis tasks such as ad-hoc queries, explorative data analyses, systematical monitoring, quality assurance and automatic report generation. MUSTANG is the result of a long-term co-operation with the Epidemiological Cancer Registry of Lower Saxony and provides a core building block for the development of the iCARDEA Data Analysis and Correlation component. At the same time we expect results and experiences from iCARDEA to be fed back into the MUSTANG platform.
• The project GO-Kard (www.offis.de/projekte/g/83/go-kard_e.php) deals with the development of a clinical department information system for the cardiology. It consists of multiple modules (e.g. intracardiac catheter, ultrasound, MRT, image and movie archive) and enables the complete integration of the department into the clinical infrastructure, based on the international standards DICOM and HL7. As a conclusion, one can refer in the »Klinikum Oldenburg« to a »paperless catheter laboratory«. The success of the system is proven by more than 50 installations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The implementation of the IHE Implantable Device Cardiac Observations (IDCO) Profile may be used as the foundation of a new GO-Kard module.

Another major contribution will be the component that exposes CIED data through standard interfaces. Contributions to the IHE initiative can be seen as prior project as well as the actual implementation of several IHE integration profiles in the GO-Kard project.

Website: http://www.offis.de