EyeMatics: An Ophthalmology Use Case Within the German Medical Informatics Initiative

• Published in: JMIR medical informatics Vol. 12; p. e60851
• Main Authors: Varghese, Julian, Schuster, Alexander, Poschkamp, Broder, Yildirim, Kemal, Oehm, Johannes, Berens, Philipp, Müller, Sarah, Gervelmeyer, Julius, Koch, Lisa, Hoffmann, Katja, Sedlmayr, Martin, Kakkassery, Vinodh, Kohlbacher, Oliver, Merle, David, Bartz-Schmidt, Karl Ulrich, Ueffing, Marius, Stahl, Dana, Leddig, Torsten, Bialke, Martin, Hampf, Christopher, Hoffmann, Wolfgang, Berthe, Sebastian, Waltemath, Dagmar, Walter, Peter, Lipprandt, Myriam, Röhrig, Rainer, Storp, Jens Julian, Zimmermann, Julian Alexander, Holtrup, Lea, Brix, Tobias, Stahl, Andreas, Eter, Nicole
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Canada JMIR Publications 05.12.2024
• Subjects: Applications of AI; Artificial Intelligence; Consent; Data exchange; Datasets; Decision making; Eye diseases; Eye Diseases - drug therapy; Eye Diseases - therapy; Germany; Health informatics; Health Information Exchange; Health Information Governance; Hospitals; Humans; Information sharing; Information systems; Infrastructure; Interoperability; Intravitreal Injections; Medical Informatics; Observational studies; Ophthalmology; Patient satisfaction; Quality/Credibility of eHealth Information and Trust Issues; Semantics; Subject specialists; Viewpoint; Viewpoints on and Experiences with Digital Technologies in Health; Germany; injections; user-centered; treatment; observational; retinal; patient data; digital ophthalmology; AI; scan; interoperability; biomarker; artificial intelligence; eye; framework; precision ophthalmology; clinical use; intravitreal; patient engagement; Germany
• ISSN: 2291-9694; 2291-9694
• DOI: 10.2196/60851

The EyeMatics project, embedded as a clinical use case in Germany’s Medical Informatics Initiative, is a large digital health initiative in ophthalmology. The objective is to improve the understanding of the treatment effects of intravitreal injections, the most frequent procedure to treat eye diseases. To achieve this, valuable patient data will be meaningfully integrated and visualized from different IT systems and hospital sites. EyeMatics emphasizes a governance framework that actively involves patient representatives, strictly implements interoperability standards, and employs artificial intelligence methods to extract biomarkers from tabular and clinical data as well as raw retinal scans. In this perspective paper, we delineate the strategies for user-centered implementation and health care–based evaluation in a multisite observational technology study.