The history of the Institute, from its beginnings in the 1960s to the present day, and its most important milestones are summarized on this page.
The Institute’s origins date back to the 1960s. At that time, Dr. habil. Helmut Bernt was appointed professor with a teaching assignment in medical statistics. The Computer Science working group that he established was granted the status of a central facility in the field of medicine in 1972. Its task was to coordinate the clinics and institutes in the area of computing technology. With the independence of the Chair of Medical Statistics and Documentation, which emerged from this working group, in 1973, and the first research projects of its own, new priorities were set and the working group was gradually expanded.
In 1984, the Institute of Medical Statistics and Documentation was founded.
In addition to teaching students, the staff’s areas of work primarily included the application and further development of biostatistical methods and procedures for computer-assisted documentation. Interdisciplinary research collaboration focused mainly on the clinics for psychiatry, gynecology and obstetrics, as well as the Cardiology Center.
Professor Bernt was granted emeritus status on September 1, 1991. The provisional leadership of the Institute was assumed by the biophysicist PD Dr. Dieter Barthel.
On March 1, 1994, Prof. Dr. Markus Löffler took over as Director of the Institute of Medical Informatics, Statistics and Epidemiology, IMISE. With him began the rebuilding and restructuring of the Institute.
On June 1, 1996, Prof. Dr. Alfred Winter was appointed Professor of Medical Informatics and Deputy Director of the Institute. Since then, he has led the research group “Management of Information Systems in Healthcare,” funded by numerous DFG projects, and played a key role in establishing a modern information system for Leipzig University Hospital.
In 1999, BMBF funding was successfully acquired for the establishment of the Leipzig Coordination Center for Clinical Trials, KKSL, now the Leipzig Center for Clinical Trials, ZKS. Prof. Markus Löffler became its scientific director.
Two years later, in 2001, an application for DFG funding to establish a professorship in bioinformatics was successful; the position was filled by Prof. Peter Stadler. This was connected with the establishment of the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics, IZBI, whose scientific director was also Prof. Löffler.
At the end of 2006, the Faculty of Medicine at Leipzig University received funding under a BMBF initiative to establish a Clinical Trial Center as a site management organization, SMO.
In 2002, the interdisciplinary research group “Ontologies in Medicine”, Onto-Med, was founded by PD Dr. Barbara Heller, who died in 2005, and Prof. Dr. Heinrich Herre. In 2007, Prof. Dr. Herre moved to the Institute. After his retirement, Prof. Herre continued to supervise this research group and has successfully continued scientific research in this field to the present day. In recent years, he has obtained several BMBF project grants on ontological topics.
With substantial involvement from IMISE, the Leipzig Research Center for Civilization Diseases, LIFE, was acquired in 2009 as part of the Saxon State Excellence Initiative.
In 2013, a W2 professorship in Genetic Statistics and Biomathematical Modeling was established at IMISE. It is headed by Prof. Dr. Markus Scholz and is closely connected with LIFE.
Since 2014, the Institute has been involved in the German National Cohort, NAKO, thereby further expanding its epidemiological expertise. Leipzig is one of the NAKO study centers. Institute staff members are actively involved in several NAKO expert groups.
From 2018 to 2026, IMISE leads the SMITH consortium, Smart Medical Information Technology for Healthcare. It is part of the BMBF Medical Informatics Initiative. Within this strategic framework, the Institute coordinates several research projects.
As part of the Medical Informatics Initiative, the professorship “Medical Data Science,” MDS, was also established. Prof. Dr. Toralf Kirsten has led this professorship and the working group of the same name at IMISE since 2021. The MDS working group focuses on the conception and development of medical infrastructures for data analysis, as well as on the analysis of healthcare data relating to selected medical endpoints.
On June 30, 2023, Professor Löffler retired. Professor Winter assumed provisional leadership of the Institute.
In the same year, the master’s degree program in Medical Informatics was also established as part of the Medical Informatics Initiative. As a result, the “Medical Informatics” specialization within the computer science degree programs became an independent degree program. The program is jointly overseen by the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. It is open to graduates from both computer science and medicine.
In 2024, Professor Kirsten founded the Clinical Decision Support Network, CDSN, together with other colleagues. Within this network, specific aspects of clinical decision support systems, CDSS, are discussed. In the long term, it is intended to support the development of clinical multicenter studies, particularly on AI-based decision support, and thus contribute to evidence generation.
On March 31, 2026, Professor Winter retired. Since then, Professor Markus Scholz has held the provisional leadership of the Institute.
Measured by third-party funding acquisition and publication activity, the Institute continues to rank among the most successful comparable institutions in Germany.