The University of Lübeck is involved in the national research project MOMENTUM via the Institute for Electrical Engineering in Medicine. MOMENTUM stands for "Mobile medical technology for integrated emergency care and trauma medicine". The project has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since September 2019 for an initial three-year period with 6.6 million euros.

The motivation of the project is to improve the flow of information between the first responders at the scene of the emergency and specialists in the emergency room or the command center. In many cases, insufficient information on the clinical condition of a patient is available during the handover at the emergency unit. Improved communication in combination with mobile medical technology enables a hospital to prepare an operating room for a specific emergency intervention even before the rescue vehicle arrives.

The goal of the MOMENTUM project is to develop and evaluate suitable concepts and technologies for networking emergency medical treatment along the process chain from the point of care to the hospital. To transfer the networking technologies into medical technology applications, existing framework conditions will be examined from a technical, ethical, legal, and social perspective. This will be the basis for the application-specific transmission of patient data, process information, video, and audio data.

Joint project with UKSH, Bremen, Leipzig, and Heidelberg

The subproject of the Institute for Electrical Engineering in Medicine deals with the reliable transmission of data via the cellular network. To ensure that the connection to the core network can always be maintained, an additional connection via drones is to be investigated. These forward the signal to increase the range of the mobile cell in the ambulance. To ensure that the drone does not hold back the emergency services, it should start autonomously and find a suitable position for an optimal radio connection. The subproject, led by Prof. Dr. Philipp Rostalski, relies on the institute's expertise in autonomous systems and modern control engineering methods. Experience in the modularization of medical technology devices can also be incorporated into the overall project.

In addition to the University of Lübeck, the University Hospital of Schleswig-Holstein with its IT staff unit and the Clinic for Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery are also involved in the project. The Innovation Center Computer Assisted Surgery (ICCAS) at the University of Leipzig is coordinating the overall project. Other project partners are the University of Bremen and Leipzig University Hospital. Industrial partners include SurgiTAIX AG from Aachen and ERNW Research GmbH in Heidelberg.