Fraunhofer Strategic Research Field

More than half of all Fraunhofer Institutes and research institutions are involved in the four major areas of health research – drugs, diagnostics, devices and data, or 4D for short. Many innovations emerge at the interface between medical science, natural science, computer science and engineering. With its emphasis on transdisciplinary research, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft offers the perfect environment for a close collaboration on health research – and on a cost-intelligent precision medicine for the benefit of patients.

The steadily increasing health care expenditures in Germany require cost-intelligent innovations, which result from the convergence where scientific disciplines intersect. Novel, cost-efficient ideas can only be translated into concrete applications under new forms of collaboration. In this context, the collaboration between the four major areas of drugs, diagnostics, data and devices – the 4Ds – is crucial. Currently, only organizations that conduct application-oriented research and operate in a highly transdisciplinary manner, such as the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, are in a position to cover and combine the range of technological disciplines required for cost-efficient innovations.

Research focuses on expanding the sovereignty of medical product and device supply in Germany and Europe, improving the usability of medical data, decoding the immune system and defining transdisciplinary translation cycles to accelerate the applicability of innovative medical products and devices.Against the backdrop of an aging population, cost pressures and shortages of skilled healthcare professionals, our research also focuses on automating healthcare provision in order to maintain quality of care, free up more space for human interaction, and take the pressure off staff.