Our approach is to intensify collaboration and education in a multiaxial way between methodical 'core' disciplines, i.e., biology, medicine, informatics, and engineering, and applied methodical disciplines, such as bioinformatics and health informatics.

From the perspective of the bio-sciences, medicine and public health, informatics plays a significant role as a critical enabler. Research in the field of molecular biology requires computational resources to make huge amounts of data generated at independent sites available and subject to multiple analysis. Clinical research will not be restricted to small local patient groups, but is likely to be more frequently extended worldwide, increasing the quality and lowering the cost of studies. Population-based studies are about to correlate genetic variation with clinically defined phenotypes taking into account environmental factors.

We educate scientists, who can combine this multidisciplinary knowledge and skills from the areas of medicine and informatics and transfer them into practice. To put it more concretely, we educate experts to 

• understand molecular mechanisms of diseases based on biological networks
• visualize diseases, increasing granularity down to molecules
• study & apply new fine-grained insights into disease mechanisms for personalized medicine, including identifying personal risks and targeting preventive interventions
• construct sensors and devices for research, diagnosis, treatment
• gain & apply knowledge about genetic variation in the population
• analyze and evaluate cost-effectiveness of health care interventions

Along with our interdisciplinary education, the interdisciplinary research areas will generate research topics for informatics, engineering, economics, statistics, and social sciences, and, conversely, will benefit from this research.