In December 2022, Prof. Dr. Georgi Chaltikyan from the European Campus Rottal-Inn (ECRI), was invited to participate and contribute to the 1st Central Asian Regional Meeting on Telemedicine that took place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

The event consisted of two days with extensive workshops attended by healthcare and technology specialists from all over Asia. The goal was to establish a cooperative framework, both among the Central Asian countries, and with the European partners, to develop and implement a cross-border telemedicine network in Central Asia. Prof. Dr. Georgi Chaltikyan was invited by the Robert Koch Institute and the WHO Regional Office as an established international telemedicine expert, to contribute to the analysis of the existing situation, and to help develop the roadmap for this framework.

During the 1st Central Asian Regional Meeting on Telemedicine participants presented their multi-faceted experience, exchanged ideas, and developed a preliminary roadmap of a regional telemedicine network project. They analysed different aspects of such a major telemedicine programme, including needs and requirements, capacity building and education, the technical aspects and interoperability, as well as regulations and the legal requirements. To work out the framework there were panel discussions and participants could join four different discussion groups. Prof. Chaltikyan not only participated in a panel discussion, but he also led the activities in the working group on capacity building and digital health education. At the end of the event, the participants jointly approved and signed a Declaration of Commitment to develop telemedicine and digital health in the Central Asian republics. It is expected that similar activities will be taking place in the next years, to result in the establishment of a functioning and sustainable regional telemedicine programme. Such experience can then be dublicated in other regions of the world.

The 1st Central Asian Regional Meeting on Telemedicine was attended by about 100 healthcare and technology specialists from all five Central Asian republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as from Iran. It was jointly organised by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ), the main German development agency, the Robert Koch Institute, which is the public health institute in Germany, and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, one of Europe’s largest university hospitals, affiliated with Humboldt University and Free University Berlin. The local organisers were the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Uzbekistan and the Department of Management of Advanced Medical Technologies in Uzbekistan. Other prominent actors were the WHO’s Regional Office for Europe, and the Norwegian Center for eHealth Research based at the University of Tromsø.

For two years, everyone has been talking about the pandemic. But how do you communicate this or other health-related topics correctly? Students from all over the world explored this question at the Global Public Health Winterschool at the European Campus Rottal-Inn (ECRI) from 10 to 17 January 2023.

About 30 students from all over the world travelled to Pfarrkirchen for the winter school, which was offered as part of the Global Public Health (GPH) degree programme, and the same number joined virtually during the week. The event was themed around communication, which is an integral part of the work of any health authority. Among other things, the focus was on intercultural communication and how to takes place through health campaigns, scientific communication and addressing political actors. But the topics of social media in health communication was also on the agenda. The organizer of the winter school and head of the GPH Master’s programme, Prof. Dr. Sabine Dittrich, had brought in renowned reinforcement. With Dr Charlotte Hammer from Camebridge University in England and Edgar Gonzales from the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Switzerland, international experts contributed to a successful week.

In addition, the students visited the State Office for Health and Food Safety (LGL) in Oberschleißheim together with Prof. Dittrich. They learned more about the German reporting system for infectious diseases from local epidemiologists and microbiologists. As the motto of the winter school was communication of health-related topics, the experts from the LGL went into detail about local health issues and how these were communicated with the population and the professional audience.

Outside of the courses, the students had enough programme to get to know the area and the Lower Bavarian culture. During an excursion to Passau, a joint bowling evening and a Bavarian snack, the participants had a lively exchange, true to the motto of the winter school. One of the highlights was the dinner in the restaurant of the town hall, which was made possible by the generous financial support of the ECRI Förderverein, the district of Rottal-Inn and the town of Pfarrkirchen.

The Deggendorf Institute of Technology (DIT) started the year with a two-day international conference. Three renowned speakers and nine expert companies from industry accepted the invitation from Dr. Helena Liebelt, Professor at the Faculty of Applied Computer Science, on 11 and 12 January. They shared their experiences with around 70 participants on the future topic of "High Performance Computing (HPC) and Quantum Computing". The highlight of this conference was that the companies had worked on their presentations together with students from the university during the winter semester.

Quantum technology in connection with high-performance computing, as it is called in technical jargon, is a trend-setting innovation driver in industry. Especially in mechanical engineering as well as in the chemical and health industries, these are playing an increasingly important role. The contents of the HPC symposium, which took place in the Deggendorf Stadthotel in presence and parallel online, were wide-ranging. They included the presentation of innovative data centres, CPU technologies, requirements for artificial intelligence in healthcare or complex customer problems, calculating precise weather forecasts or the architecture of a cooling system for data centres.

"All the students," explains Liebelt, "worked closely with the renowned HPC/QC experts and used the direct exchange as an opportunity to network. Not only on a content level, but of course also on a professional level." The latter was a valuable side effect that the young people very much welcomed, as the DIT professor reported.

The crowning glory of the conference was the live feed from Prof. Dr. Anne Matsuura in the United States to announce the two winners of the world's first Intel Quantum Computing Challenge.

The Deggendorf HPC Symposium took place for the second time this year. Since quantum technology is a very broad field and many new developments and innovations can be expected for the participants and students in the future, the series is to be continued. All participants also agreed that this symposium is a successful platform for motivating students, bringing them closer to practice and acquiring them as future employees.