From a participatively developed pilot project to full establishment: Digital Medicine Specialization at the School Launches Its Second Cohort

The upper secondary school specialization ‘Digital Medicine’ at the Oberschule am Waller Ring successfully launched this summer. Twenty-five students are participating in the first round, ten of whom come from other districts such as Schwachhausen, Horn-Lehe, Bremen-Nord, and Bremen city centre, Germany. This diversity of backgrounds and perspectives is perceived as very enriching in the classroom.

On 23 and 24 January, interested school students can find out more about the second round in the new school year 26/27 in the auditorium of the school building at Lange Reihe 81. More information here.

The Digital Medicine specialization functions as a transdisciplinary public engagement and education infrastructure, enabling early co-production of knowledge between researchers, school teachers, and school students while building future capacities for digital healthcare.

As the initiator for Fraunhofer MEVIS, I developed this profile together with Sabrina Tölken, Matthias Günther, Susanne Diekmann, Anna Rörich, Jan-Philipp Redlich, with many contributions from other scientists, such as Jan Hendrik Moltz, Alexander Köhn, Valentin Kraft and Temke Kohlbrandt, together with dedicated teachers Jan Wicke, Viktoria Zoeger, who are driving the topic forward with great commitment, and their colleagues.

The aim is to establish digital medicine as an integral part of school education. In terms of content, the profile combines biology, mathematics, computer science, and psychology, and also integrates other subjects such as Deutsch, English, art, and physics in a consistently multidisciplinary approach. In this way, we open up early prospects for young people in a professional field that is central to future healthcare. Together, we strive to further communicate and engage with current Fraunhofer R&D in the specialization as part of dissemination measures for research projects.

The profile emerged from many years of collaboration within the framework of the ‘International Fraunhofer Talent School Bremen: STEAM Imaging,’ which serves as an incubator for multidisciplinary creative approaches to R&D topics at Fraunhofer MEVIS. Thanks to the BMFTR-funded project ‘#MOIN Campus Neighbourhood Visibility,’ contributions from mathematics in particular were integrated into teaching modules in the context of digital medicine.

The specialization shows how relationship building, continuity, and strategic development can lead to sustainable cooperation between schools and industry-oriented research in order to attract tomorrow's students and researchers in digital medicine.

I am delighted about this new offer for young people and our success.

Image Copyright: Fraunhofer MEVIS