Biotop-report 2012

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BioTOPics 44 | May 2012 

BioTOP-Report

Health-IT

New Opportunities for Biotechnology on the 

Interface between Life Sciences and IT

Berlin-Brandenburg is not only one of Europe’s most attractive life sciences and healthcare locations, but also a 

leading centre of the IT industry. That combination offers optimal conditions for the development of innovative 

health IT solutions for the regional and global market. To bring together the know-how of the different sectors 

involved and promote even stronger networking between the players in the region, TSB Innovationsagentur 

Berlin organised a workshop on “Health IT Solutions for the Healthcare Industries of the Future” in cooperation 

with SAP and the Hasso Plattner Institute in late November 2011

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The participants, representing science and industry, jointly devel-

oped interdisciplinary scenarios of what regional model projects 

for innovative IT-supported healthcare may be seen by 2020. 

Several ideas from the workshop were adopted and are to be de-

veloped in working groups in the years ahead.

Health IT comprises a broad range of applications, including tele-

medicine and solutions for process optimisation in hospitals as 

well as technologies for handling large data volumes along the 

entire value chain from research to patient therapy and care. Be-

low we present some examples of projects in the Berlin region 

to illustrate what is happening on the interface between life sci-

ences and IT.

IT Future of Medicine (ITFoM) – 

Berlin heads a European flagship project 

Modern biotechnology and today’s increasingly personalised 

medicine require a huge amount of fundamental data. That will 

present the IT sector with unprecedented challenges regarding 

hardware, software, memory and communication systems. To 

meet these new tasks in the clinical, technological and ICT-based 

environment, 60 mainly European institutions and companies 

have joined forces in the initiative “IT Future of Medicine” which 

is being coordinated by the Max Planck Institute for Molecular 

Genetics in Berlin. ITFoM will develop computer models by which 

personalised “virtual patients” will be derived from the molecular, 

physiological, anatomic and environmental data of every individ-

ual patient. The aim is to develop individually optimised preven-

tion and therapy concepts and minimise the potential side-effects 

of therapies (more information: www.itfom.eu). 

Using bioinformatics to develop a better 

understanding of life

Bioinformatics is indispensable to catalogue, analyse and inter-

pret the huge data volumes in medical research, genomics and 

systems biology. Many questions can simply not be answered 

without innovative computer programmes and mathematical 

methods. “Treffpunkt Bioinformatik” is a leading expert forum 

in this field. It is organised jointly every year by the Max Planck 

Institute for Molecular Genetics and BioTOP Berlin-Brandenburg 

in the German Capital Region. Its eighth meeting in September 

2011 was attended by experts from Germany and the United 

States and devoted to “Bioinformatics and Evolution Biology“. 

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Documentation of the workshop for downloading at www.tsb-berlin.de/health-it

Prof. Dr. Hans Lehrach

Director of the Max Planck Institute for  

Molecular Genetics

Medicine will in future be based on the ever larger volumes 

of available patient data. A small arithmetical example: At the 

MPIMG we need 12 hours of computing performance to simu-

late a tumour based on our cancer model which demonstrates 

the interaction of about 4000 cell components. In the case of 

a fully virtual patient, we would be talking about more than 

1000 different cell types, each with 1000 different conditions! 

This can be done only with smaller chips, optimised data flows 

and smarter algorithms which increase the available comput-

ing capacity!

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BioTOPics 44 | May 2012 

 Health-IT 

BioTOP-Report 

One of the themes addressed was how bioinformatics supports 

evolution biologists in reconstructing the emergence of present-

day organisms and decoding the evolution processes involved. 

By sequencing the genomes of many species and analysing them 

applying IT-supported methods, scientists are working on the 

reconstruction of phylogenesis and thereby developing a better 

understanding of life. 

A mobile application for personalised cancer therapy 

from Berlin-Brandenburg

In the context of a joint research initiative, Charité – Univer-

sitätsmedizin Berlin, together with the SAP Innovation Center 

and the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam developed a new 

data management technology for the research and therapy of 

cancer within only seven months. The HANA Oncolyzer is based 

on the in-memory technology co-developed at the Hasso Plattner 

Institute which permits accessing all relevant patient and clinical 

data in realtime and supplementing them at any time. Using the 

mobile end user device, this can be done directly from the pa-

tient bed. Cancer therapies can therefore now be adjusted more 

specifically and more quickly to each patient and cancer type, so 

that the chances of healing improve considerably. In addition, 

this technology also makes the work of researchers far less oner-

ous. For example in gene sequencing where terabyte volumes of 

raw data per patient are generated, the HANA Oncolyzer helps 

analyse them as to their relevance and select them accordingly. 

The HANA Oncolyzer was presented to a broad expert audience 

at CeBIT in spring 2012. Productive operation is scheduled to 

begin this year. 

Figures: Analytical view of HANA Oncolyzer (Source: SAP AG)

Cafer Tosun

Managing Director 

SAP Innovation Center

With the HANA Oncolyzer, SAP is also to some extent embark-

ing into new territories beyond the field of “classical” SAP 

applications. This mobile application is helping oncology move 

towards personalised cancer therapy by providing a solution 

that can cope with the enormous flood of data and informa-

tion. Until now, doctors wanting to use a promising person-

alised therapy need to research files and other documents for 

up to two days to find the patient whose features are suited 

for precisely that treatment. Using in-memory technology per 

iPad, this can now be done in just seconds. At the same time, 

the joint project HANA Oncolyzer with the Charité and HPI 

is a perfect example of how we at the SAP Innovation Center 

operate. We work directly with users because they are most 

familiar with the challenges in their field and with research 

facilities with a high international reputation like the HPI. In 

Berlin-Brandenburg we have exactly the kind of network that 

brings together leading experts like these. The HANA Onco-

lyzer demonstrates very impressively how fast such an initia-

tive can deliver excellent results.

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