1956

The first documented use of medical informatics methods in Göttingen dates back to 1956, when Prof. Hans Hosemann used punch card machines to determine characteristic pregnancy durations and maturation characteristics from more than 20,000 birth histories. He was one of the first group of scientists in Germany to advance medical research using electronic data processing.

"It has never been possible to examine birth material as carefully as we have, because a full lifetime of research would not have been sufficient without the use of punch card machines. We estimate that in these 3 years we have done the same amount of work by machine as it would have taken 400 years to do by hand" (Hosemann, 1948).

In 1956, the first annual conference of the oldest international medical informatics society GMDS (Society for Medical Documentation and Statistics) was held in Göttingen.

1971

In 1971, the first professorship of the Chair of Medical Documentation and Data Processing was filled by Prof. Carl Theo Ehlers. The chair was later renamed “Medical Informatics”. With a rapidly growing team of around 80 employees, Prof. Ehlers enabled the operation of self-programmed hospital software for an IBM mainframe system. Particularly successful was GISI - an intensive care monitoring system, which was implemented by Heinz Schillings and his team in the programming language MUMPS (Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-programming System).

1990

In the following years, the first network technologies were taken up; both as ISDN networks and with the TCP/IP networks that are common today. When Ehlers retired in the early 1990s, his deputy PD Peter Pietrzyk took over the management.

1995

In 1995, Prof. Otto Rienhoff was appointed head of the chair. Important milestones in the following years were the separation of a newly organized clinical computer center from the scientifically oriented Department for Medical Informatics, the conversion of the outdated hospital information system to modern network-based systems, as well as the conversion of the billing processes to the new ICD-10 and DRG codes.

2002

The Bachelor's and Master's degree courses in Medical Informatics were founded in 2002 in cooperation with the Georg-August University of Göttingen.

2019

At the beginning of 2019, Prof. Ulrich Sax took over as acting head of the department. Since September, Prof. Dagmar Krefting has headed the Department of Medical Informatics, which now has around 100 employees and currently three professorships.