Start of the BMFTR-funded joint project “PETRA”
Although menopause – also known as perimenopause – can significantly impair women's well-being and performance, medical information and support have often been inadequate to date. As part of the joint project “PETRA: AI-supported, educational therapy support for perimenopause,” the Social Research Center is working together with the four partners Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE, the Junior Professorship for Health and E-Health at Ruhr University Bochum, the educational platform for women's health FEMNA, and the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité Berlin, to develop an AI-supported app that offers personalized information to affected women, thereby helping to improve their symptoms. The project for gender-equitable medicine is being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space with around two million euros over a project period of three years.
Health app accompanies, informs, and supports those affected
In addition to a literature analysis, co-creation workshops with those affected and problem-centered interviews with gynecologists will first be conducted to determine needs. Based on this, an app with a data and knowledge platform and its own AI chatbot will be developed. On this basis, each user will receive individually compiled knowledge modules and recommendations on how to deal with and alleviate their symptoms.
During a pilot phase, the acceptance and user-friendliness of the app will then be evaluated. Feedback from users will be continuously incorporated into further development. This will ensure that the content is presented in a way that is understandable and practical for users. This also significantly improves access to information. “Our goal is to enable women to ideally strengthen their health literacy around perimenopause with the help of the app,” explains Dr. Theresa Ahrens, head of the Digital Health Engineering department at Fraunhofer IESE and coordinator of the overall project.
With the app, the consortium wants to appeal in particular to women who have little medical knowledge or who live in a social environment that has shown little interest in women's health to date. For these groups, the need for education is particularly high, and the app can greatly improve their individual quality of life.
Holistic improvement of women's health
The data collected in the app will also be anonymized for scientific studies, given the consent of the users, as many aspects of perimenopause have not yet been sufficiently researched. PETRA thus not only enables individuals to improve their quality of life, but also closes a gap in gender-specific research and improves medical care for women in the long term.
The Social Research Center Dortmund, together with Ruhr University Bochum, is providing social science monitoring for the PETRA project and, together with FEMNA, is primarily responsible for preparing the app content. Fraunhofer IESE is responsible for the technical development of the app and the AI models, while the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité contributes its experience with the interoperable data standard FHIR and the collection of research data.
The Social Research Center's subproject is led by sfs-researcher Christine Best and carried out in collaboration with Dr. Lisa-Marian Schmidt, sfs-researcher and coordinator of the research area “Work, Organization, Gender.”