Discussing New Opportunities for Research Utilization of Healthcare Data at the University of Pécs
A professional mini-conference on the research utilization of healthcare data was organized through the collaboration of the Medical School, the Clinical Centre, and the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Pécs. The event focused on fostering institutional cooperation that can support structured data collection, research-oriented processing of healthcare data, and the more efficient generation of scientific outcomes in the long term.
Participants were welcomed by Dr. Andor Sebestyén, President of the Clinical Centre of the University of Pécs. In his opening remarks, he emphasized that future scientific publications and citations increasingly rely on high-quality, well-structured datasets. He also highlighted the importance of institutional collaboration and noted that research data processing can be supported by advanced informatics and biometric solutions.
The first presentation of the scientific program was delivered by Dr. Balázs Győrffy, Director of the Institute of Transdisciplinary Discoveries of the Medical School, entitled “The End of Manual Data Collection: Automated Clinical Data Extraction and Validated Analytics.” He introduced the CIDER system, developed together with his colleagues, which uses large language models (LLMs) to extract structured data from clinical documents. Participants gained insight into the workflow of document upload, automated data extraction, and the subsequent processing of data for research purposes.
Dr. János Tibor Fekete, a researcher at the Institute of Transdisciplinary Discoveries, presented the MetaAnalysisOnline and NetMetaEasy platforms. His lecture demonstrated how these online tools can support the conduct of conventional and network meta-analyses, as well as the comparative evaluation of clinical evidence.
In the next presentation, Dr. Otília Menyhárt discussed opportunities for utilizing data from the National Health Insurance Fund Administration (NEAK) in research. She outlined the process through which a research idea can develop into a fully implemented project, from defining the research question and project design through ethical approval and data requests to statistical analyses and the interpretation of scientific results. She also noted that the research group has already successfully completed several ethical approval procedures, providing valuable practical experience for similar future projects.
Using a number of examples, Dr. Menyhárt illustrated the research potential of NEAK datasets in neurological, psychiatric, and oncological studies. At the same time, she emphasized that these examples were intended primarily for demonstration purposes and encouraged participants to consider how similar approaches could be applied within their own disciplines and research questions. Her presentation highlighted the broad range of research opportunities that large-scale healthcare databases can offer across numerous clinical and scientific fields.
In his presentation, Zsolt Nagy provided an overview of the healthcare datasets available for research purposes. He introduced the data sources accessible to researchers and reviewed the key procedural and documentation requirements associated with data requests.
The closing presentation of the conference was delivered by Sándor Kovács, Senior Healthcare Data Analyst at the Health Technology Assessment and Pharmacoeconomics Research Centre of the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Pécs. He presented the current status of the healthcare data platform under development and outlined the planned professional activities and working groups that will support further collaboration in the coming months.
The presentations clearly demonstrated that structured collection of healthcare data, the application of advanced data-processing methods, and close cooperation among university stakeholders are all essential components of future data-driven research. The event also provided an opportunity for experts from various disciplines to exchange ideas on further developing research infrastructure and expanding opportunities for data utilization.
The scientific focus of the conference and a substantial proportion of the presentations were closely linked to the activities of the Institute of Transdisciplinary Discoveries. Through developments in data extraction, data analytics, and methodological support for research, the institute continues to play an active role in strengthening collaborative research initiatives across the University of Pécs.