Prof. Dr. Peter Haas is leaving the Fachhochschule Dortmund. The nationally recognized expert for IT solutions in the healthcare industry bid farewell to his retirement with a final lecture in the large lecture hall of the Faculty of Computer Science.
In the end, he had to rush a little to get through the slides on time. "We got lost at the beginning," says Prof. Haas, glancing at his watch. But the 150 guests in the lecture hall, including fellow lecturers, partners from Business Studies and research, friends and family, were happy to forgive him for every extra minute. After the entertaining turbo lecture on the "Value contribution of informatics for patient care", they gave the speaker a long ovation. "This is a brilliant energizer for retirement," says a visibly moved Peter Haas. "Thank you for letting me be here for 30 years."
"I was lucky to work in an industry with approachable and friendly people," he emphasizes. And this over many decades. Since graduating from the University of Heidelberg in 1982, he has been involved in information processing in the healthcare sector. In 1994, he was appointed to the Fachhochschule Dortmund, where he helped to establish the Medical Informatics study program.
Networked in the healthcare sector
He was President of the conhIT Congress (now the DMEA), Europe's most important meeting for decision-makers from the healthcare industry, politics and science, for many years. In the German Society for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology, he played a leading role in the "Information Systems in Healthcare" working group and has been a member of the commission for training in medical informatics since 1999. And he was always a "committed professor who did far more than just impart knowledge", praises Prof. Dr. Daniel Hamburg, Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science at Fachhochschule Dortmund. Prof. Haas saw himself as a companion and mentor for the students.
He showed them the benefits of computer science in medicine. And, above all, what value it has for people.
Every medical finding, every physical ailment is measurable, "and that is usually before it can be felt. The period in between is early detection," explained Prof. Haas in his farewell lecture. The later medicine intervenes, the worse the outcome. Can IT help? Yes. It already does - in prevention, diagnostics and treatment. For example, with apps that measure health parameters and encourage us to exercise, with AI that recognizes patterns in big data and supports doctors in detecting diseases. Or with the creation of custom-fit implants from a 3D printer. However, there is still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to electronic patient records.
Britta Böckmann: "Your voice will be missed in the industry."
The topic is one of the research focuses of the now retired professor. Dashboards on patient histories are displayed on the screen in the lecture hall, with diagrams showing links to previous illnesses and therapy development. "Problem-oriented medical records and clinical dashboards are needed in order to derive successful treatment management on this basis," says Peter Haas. So far, the ePA - the electronic patient file - is little more than a bag of documents. However, the file must become a dialog partner for doctors. The focus must therefore be on granular documentation and the connection between a wide variety of data. This also requires a new mindset in medicine. And patients themselves must be seen as part of their own treatment team.
"Your voice will be missing in the industry," concludes Prof. Dr. Britta Böckmann. She also teaches medical informatics at Fachhochschule Dortmund and is the spokesperson for the WisPerMed research training group. She praises Peter Haas' "view of things as they should be". He is not only a valued colleague who is retiring, but also an advocate for innovative medicine that focuses on people and improving patients' quality of life.