Digital sovereignty for the medicine of the future: Charité and Schwarz Digits establish joint venture

• Agreement on the secure networking of health data in the future Schwarz Charité Health Data GmbH. 
• Highly specialized IT platform to enable individualized and more effective prevention and treatment options thanks to evidence-based findings.
• Sovereign STACKIT Cloud serves as the technological basis and guarantees maximum security and data protection.

Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Schwarz Digits are setting new standards for a digitalized healthcare system. In the future "Schwarz Charité Health Data GmbH", both partners are pooling their expertise to securely network medical data and thus create the basis for targeted prevention and state-of-the-art research and treatment options. 

Bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and technological excellence
Until now, heterogeneous IT systems and incompatible data formats have hampered the flow of information in the healthcare sector. To overcome this fragmentation, the future Schwarz Charité Health Data GmbH is offering HIVEPRO, a platform that harmonizes and networks healthcare data. Clinic operators can save and access their information there independently of the source system with full sovereignty. This will enable clinics to use data in a much more targeted manner for the benefit of their patients in future.

"The digitalization of the healthcare system can only succeed through trust and a joint approach. With our joint venture, we are creating the necessary basis for securely networking sensitive healthcare data," explains Arne Kaufmann, Co-Managing Director of the future Schwarz Charité Health Data GmbH. "Our goal is to create real added value from fragmented data pools that will sustainably improve medical care, enable evidence-based research and directly benefit people."
The joint venture combines digital sovereignty with cutting-edge European medicine and draws on existing experience and tried-and-tested software modules from successful research and digitalization projects. While Charité contributes its medical expertise as Europe's leading university hospital, Schwarz Digits provides the technological know-how for continuous platform development.

Sovereign infrastructure in accordance with European data protection standards
The platform is operated on STACKIT's sovereign cloud infrastructure. This means that data sovereignty remains entirely in Germany and complies with high European data protection standards.

"Networked data for a healthy future doesn't just happen by itself - it needs a powerful, secure and scalable technological basis," explains Stefan Becker, Co-Managing Director of the future Schwarz Charité Health Data GmbH. "We combine modern cloud technology with open, manufacturer-independent data standards and thus create the basis for securely networking health data in the long term and making it usable across system boundaries. In doing so, we benefit from the experience of the HiGHmed consortium, which has been in existence since 2016. As part of the medical informatics initiative, HiGHmed has successfully demonstrated how medical data can be merged in a structured way and made accessible for optimized medical care and research."

Structure of the joint venture
Schwarz Digits will hold a majority stake of 75 percent, while Charité will have a 25 percent stake in the joint venture. This partnership guarantees that technological sovereignty and top medical expertise go hand in hand in order to quickly and continuously adapt the platform to new legal requirements and scientific findings.