Introduction

The German Society for Vascular Surgery and Vascular Medicine (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gefäßchirurgie und Gefäßmedizin, DGG e. V.) now represents over 3100 members. Important fields of work within the society include administrative tasks of self-management, the professional and political positioning of the discipline, the promotion of young professionals (MaGiC campaign, Young Forum), specialist training (Summer Academy), and the certification of vascular centers, to mention but a few. Last but not least, the DGG is a scientific society; therefore, accordingto its statutes the promotion of research and science and their corresponding visibility is one of the central tasks of the DGG.

For this purpose, the research commission of the DGG has now set up an online-based platform on the homepage, the primary goal of which is to provide location-based information on the research content of vascular surgery research institutions, their facilities, and contact information in a clearly arranged manner to scientifically interested members and external interested parties for information and cross-location networking.

In accordance with the mandate of the German federal and state governments, active medical research is primarily conducted at university hospitals [3]; however, individual non-university hospitals are also involved in clinical care research [5].

The DGG has various structures to promote and organize research within the professional society. Firstly, this is anchored in the board of directors. For this purpose, a permanent representative for the interests of research in vascular surgery (the vascular surgery research institutions) and for research questions was established on the board within the framework of the last amendment of the statutes.

Furthermore, the DGG has a subsidiary, the German Institute for Vascular Health Research (Deutsches Institut für gefäßmedizinische Gesundheitsforschung, DIGG), the Science and Research Commission as well as the Convention of Chairs of Vascular Surgery (Konvent der Ordinarien), in order to cover or deal with the different tasks and requirements for the areas of science and research.

The research commission of the DGG, with the support of the Board of Directors and Secretariat of the DGG as well as a web design agency, has now created a project that is innovative in the German-speaking area and is intended to promote cooperation and the exchange of information between research groups in the field of vascular surgery.

With the introduction of a digital research map on the official website, the professional society provides a comprehensive insight into the various working groups at universities as well as non-university sites in Germany actively conducting research.

This groundbreaking initiative provides not only an overview of research topics but also information on equipment, methods used, and vascular surgery researchers (physicians, “vascular surgeon scientists” and nonmedical researchers) in the respective research units of the vascular surgery departments.

Project description

Project idea

The idea of a synoptic representation of the different research locations of vascular surgery units already emerged around 10 years ago. This project idea was triggered by the increasing number of independent university vascular surgery departments at the beginning of the 2000s. Both the number of fully equipped chairs with their own budget and thus their own research budget increased as did the access of not fully independent vascular surgery departments to research resources.

This development also led to an increase in the number of purely scientific staff in vascular surgery departments. Parallel to this, the involvement of basic scientists and full-time research physicians resulted in better access to methodological procedures and more complex analyses. Cellular, biomechanical, genetic, and animal models were used, biomaterial banks were established, and study centers for clinical trials and health services research have been increasingly available for vascular surgery studies since that time.

The result of this development is, among other things, an increasing volume of data, which are independently generated, processed, and published by vascular surgery researchers. This diverse and also qualitatively steadily improving activity was presented in sessions at vascular surgery congresses, but remained, like the corresponding written publications, known only to an inner circle of vascular surgeons engaged in active research.

The information on research activities that is available and thus essentially accessible to all, is thus intended to represent the performance of vascular surgery units and their staff in terms of quantity and content. At the same time, the individual locations should be recognizable at a glance and given the opportunity to present themselves as well as to make contact data accessible.

This work platform is intended to promote networking between departments and individuals and to facilitate collaborations on a content basis for academic exchange. In addition, physical resources and competencies could be shared between sites and individuals on the basis of collaborations if these are not available at their own sites but are available elsewhere.

Initiation and implementation

The prerequisites for implementation included a mandate from the Board of Directors and a budget framework; accordingly, these prerequisites were officially made available in 2022 and the research commission of the DGG was tasked with implementing the content.

In a first step, the commission records which parameters of a department the map should show in order to fulfil the mentioned requirements. From this it created a sample questionnaire. This sample questionnaire was filled out independently by five institutions from among the members of the research commission, so that the commission could evaluate the resulting profiles.

The questionnaire was then adapted and subsequently sent to 37 German institutions of university vascular surgery from a distribution list of the DGG. The distribution list includes all vascular surgery institutions undertaking research activity known in the three German-speaking professional societies and represented in the DGG, a total of 78 sites from 3 countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). All university vascular surgery units were classified as such institutions. In addition, there were other institutions at which vascular surgeons were actively undertaking research activities and which were identified in the context of committee work, publications, or collaborations. The Austrian and Swiss institutions on the distribution list were not contacted. This decision was taken within the circle of the research commission of the DGG in coordination with the DGG office and is based on the fact that this is an initiative of the DGG. Up to now, there has been no agreement on an international mapping, neither from the perspective of the title and external presentation nor from the perspective of the demarcation of the professional societies from each other. Thus, questions of technical, legal, and economic implementation have not yet been discussed in an international context.

The profile questionnaire was returned by eight sites within the first deadline. The research commission then wrote again to all sites that had not provided feedback and redisseminated information about the project through the DGG Board and the other commissions and departments.

This was followed by further responses; after the “go live” 18 sites are now mapped. Further inquiries are constantly being received and processed. Thus, a further increase in active locations is expected.

The research map has been posted on the DGG homepage since the end of 2022 and is accessible to all without access restrictions (Fig. 1 and Table 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Landing page for research locations in Germany, map view for geographical search. Courtesy © DGG e. V., all rights reserved/Copyright map material: OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright)

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Table 1 List of the sites included and mapped in the research map to date with their research priorities
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The uniform resource locator (URL) is:

https://www.gefaesschirurgie.de/wissenschaft/forschungsstandorte-in-deutschland

Discussion

The digital research map is the result of a dedicated collaboration between the research commission, the DGG board, the administrative office, and service providers from the field of information technology. The goal was to create a user-friendly platform where DGG members and other interested parties can quickly and easily find information about the various research groups. The website features a map on which the locations of the research groups are marked. By clicking on the respective locations, users can obtain detailed information on the research topics, equipment, and methods used at each site.

The digital research map offers numerous advantages for the vascular surgery community. First, it provides a comprehensive overview of research activities at different sites, leading to more effective collaboration and faster knowledge exchange. The transparency of existing equipment and methods used facilitates the identification of collaborative opportunities. Researchers can specifically search for groups working on similar topics or having specific equipment to strengthen their own research projects.

Furthermore, the digital research map promotes the networking of researchers and enables the establishment of partnerships across institutional boundaries. This helps to strengthen the scientific community and provides the opportunity for joint research projects and the exchange of best practices.

From the point of view of the project’s initiators, the (research) map is intended to fulfil three objectives. Firstly, researchers should be able to quickly identify institutions associated with research priorities and find appropriate contact persons. Secondly, orientation and self-classification in the vascular surgery research landscape in Germany should be possible; and thirdly, particularly those interested in research who have not yet been integrated into one of the competence centers presented should have the opportunity to establish contact with them. This is aimed both at students who wish to pursue a scientific career in vascular surgery as well as at clinicians who work at locations not yet represented and who are interested in an academic career.

With respect to students, it is important to achieve visibility of one’s own university campus in order to be recognized as an attractive department for academic work (doctoral thesis, PhD, habilitation, learning methods, arranging stays abroad). In order to recruit young researchers in general and in particular in the academic context, it is necessary to present professional structures and high-quality results. Thus, the research map of one’s own institution can help to attract motivated, scientifically interested young scientists who may feel attracted by the scientific competence and focus at the site through an appealing presentation within the research map.

In particular, the research map can be useful for young scientists, as it is a low-threshold tool to obtain an overview of existing expertise at the different sites in a short time, even if one is not yet intensively networked in the vascular surgery research community. This makes it easier to identify potential collaborative partnerships for studies or to request technical expertise in fields where one’s own expertise is still insufficient. In this way, the digitally visible network can help to build up or expand the individual scientific network. The exchange between different institutions is facilitated and hurdles for possible cooperation are removed. Ultimately, the map can also help to identify topics that have so far been poorly represented in vascular surgery research in Germany, thereby supporting colleagues at the start of their scientific career to discover a promising field for themselves or to intensify their exchange with already established institutions in a topic field that has already been researched.

The research map is also an important statement underlining the self-concept of the subject of vascular surgery with its claim to innovation and academic basis. The visibility of the research activity in the entire field of activity of the DGG is also a relevant element of highly specialized medicine in times of diversification and specialization of human medicine in general and vascular medicine in particular.

Comparable efforts of other scientific institutions and authorities confirm the need for a clear presentation of information for the classification of increasingly complex research structures in many areas of academic medicine [4]. Analogous to this position, the German University Rectors Conference (HRK) has established thematically focused research priorities over the past years on the basis of its individual mission statement and a corresponding appointment practice, which, presented on a research map, make their specific research profile recognizable in a diversifying university landscape [1]. For the HRK, the situation with respect to international competition in which German universities find themselves was also one of the motivations for creating a research map. Similarly, the German Society for Surgery (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Chirurgie, DGCH), for example, took up ongoing efforts in 2014 to provide an overview of centers actively conducting research in various disciplines on a research map [2].

The DGG research map differs from the aforementioned projects of other institutions by highlighting the translational aspect of research. It does not primarily present scientific research groups as such but presents information personnel-wise and thematically in the overall constellation of the clinical or academic institution. In addition, the focus on the subject of vascular surgery and vascular medicine allows an exact and detailed presentation with a claim to the greatest possible completeness, which is currently not yet possible for comparable multidisciplinary projects.

With respect to the mapped information, it seems reasonable to provide as detailed an account as possible of the research at one’s own location. Ultimately, this enables more targeted inquiries for specific sets of problems, for example, if interested parties are looking for biobank samples on specific disease patterns or need help with a specific experimental approach. Ultimately, each contributing institution and facility should ask itself what information in the entries of others it could benefit from and report on itself to a similar extent. This will ensure that the map can fulfil one of its essential missions, which is to improve collaboration among vascular surgery research institutions.

The up to dateness of the provided map is an essential concern of the project initiators. In order to ensure this, it is essential that the research map is regularly checked and updated. For this purpose, after an initiation interval of 24 months, the represented centers and persons are contacted every 12 months to inform them of any changes in the contents. In addition, the DGG head office implements change requests on the institutions own initiative on an ongoing basis. In the initiation phase, the centers are also called upon to present themselves on the map, if not yet recorded.

Outlook

The DGG’s digital research map marks a milestone in the representation of vascular research within vascular surgery in Germany, both internally and externally, and offers a promising outlook for the future. Continuous updates and enhancements turn the map into a dynamic resource providing real-time information to researchers. The integration of feedback mechanisms allows users to contribute their experiences and insights, which helps to further improve the platform. Furthermore, it is conceivable that in the future it will be possible to display already established collaborations between individual centers in the research map. It would be conceivable to highlight successful collaborations of centers that were able to successfully publish their joint work on the research map, also with the aim of making the scientific achievements among the members of the DGG more recognizable to the outside world.

A first project of this kind is currently being initiated in Heidelberg in cooperation with almost all German chairholders in vascular surgery. Genetic analyses of thoracic aortic pathologies are performed across sites and are outlined here as an example:

It is believed that more than 20% of all patients with thoracic aortic aneurysm and dissection (TAAD) have genetic hereditary alterations. These predominantly affect connective tissue genes for integrity and functionality of the aortic vessel wall. A distinction must be made between disease-causing mutations (e.g., Marfan syndrome, FBN1 gene) and genetic risk factors for the development of thoracic aortic pathologies. Multicenter genetic analysis of thoracic aortic pathologies (penetrating aortic ulcers, PAU, intramural hematomas, IMHs, aneurysms, Stanford type B dissections) will be carried out in a registry. Questions such as: (a) can genetic differences be detected in different thoracic aortic pathologies (pathogenesis), (b) can a correlation to genetic findings be found with respect to the clinical course of the disease (outcome, progression, reinterventions, etc.) (polygenic risk score) and (c) can new genetic risk variants or candidate genes for thoracic aortic pathologies be identified, can only be addressed and answered in a multicenter setting using large collectives.

For projects such as this, as the map continues to grow as a dynamic resource, skills brokerage could be implemented in the sense of a search–bid function.

With the help of this article, the DGG calls on all scientifically active members to represent themselves or their center on the research map. This is essential to complete the picture of the lived vascular surgery research landscape. Furthermore, all clinically active members of the DGG are encouraged to use this resource and, as described in the example above, to take advantage of appropriate contact offers and start their own research projects if they are interested in and enthusiastic about vascular surgery research.

Conclusion

The DGG digital research map represents a groundbreaking initiative to strengthen collaboration and information exchange in vascular research. By providing a comprehensive overview of working groups, research topics, and equipment, it promotes collaboration, facilitates the identification of opportunities for cooperation, strengthens the networked community of vascular surgeons, and enables questions to be addressed that can only be answered in a multicenter approach. The outlook for the future is promising as the digital research map is continually expanded and updated to meet the needs of researchers.

Likewise, the map enables or increases the visibility of the vascular surgery community’s research activity and accomplishments to students, vascular researchers from other disciplines, as well as journalists, industry, and interested parties from abroad and the general public.