Making research data discoverable and reusable

How MEx works

MEx is a digital platform that maps metadata on research activities and research data at the RKI in a transparent way aiming to facilitate the reuse of this data. Often research data for health research is distributed across multiple storage locations and difficult to find. MEx provides a central and comprehensive overview of existing research activities within the RKI based on their metadata,  and offers a modern, digital, and transparent solution for researchers conducting secondary data analyses.

The Project

The metadata exchange platform, in short MEx, is a joint public health project from the collaboration between Data4Life and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), and is also one of the numerous measures to implement the German government's open data strategy. The transparency created by MEx lays the foundation for continuing to fully exploit the full potential of the steadily growing data pool, simplifying secondary research and promoting developments in the field of artificial intelligence.

A pilot of the platform was developed in close cooperation. Based on the good cooperation, MEx will be introduced throughout the RKI as a transparency platform for finding and ultimately re-using data. Maximum transparency and subsequent use are ensured by making the code available (open sourcing).