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Prof. Jörg Barkhausen elected President of the German Radiology Society 2021-2023

Using digitisation for radiology, strengthening interprofessional collaboration, inspiring students

Prof. Dr. Jörg Barkhausen, Professor for Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at the University of Lübeck and Director of the Clinic for Radiology und Nuclear Medicine at the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Lübeck, has been elected to the Board of the German Radiology Society (DRG) until 2025 and President for the next period of office (2021–2023). The announcement was made at the 100th German Radiology Congress, which took place in Leipzig from 29 May to 1 June.

Prof. Barkhausen sees the use of digitisation in radiology as a key focus of his future work. “For more than ten years, radiology has already been fully digitised at many locations in Germany, but our use of the potential of this digital information has been utterly insufficient up to now,” he says. Artificial intelligence will radically change radiology in the next ten years and help to record, quantify and evaluate image information in a structured manner.

He considers it equally important to strengthen collaboration between medical radiology technicians, physicists, IT specialists, and medical colleagues in other disciplines, and to make students and young researchers excited about radiology. “Interprofessional cooperation and close work with doctors from other disciplines is a basic requirement for meeting the challenges of the future,” says Prof. Barkhausen.

The German Radiology Society, Society for Medical Radiology e.V., was founded in Berlin in 1905 and with its long history is also one of the most important medical societies (https://www.drg.de/de-DE/1/startseite/). It is committed to promoting all areas of radiology, including in basic research. The society has almost 9,400 members and comprises 13 working groups, a training academy, as well as numerous committees and activities. It is involved in the initial and continuing training of students, medical radiology technicians, medical physicists, and doctors.

The DRG has just presented its project “Radiology in Germany. A White Paper”. 15 radiologists, medical physicists, and medical radiology technicians, including two authors from Lübeck, reflected on the topic over a period of one and a half years in a collective research, workshop and editorial process and then put their views onto paper.