Annika Wittig

The well-being of the study participants is always top priority in clinical trials. In this context, not only health aspects play a role, but also the informed consent as well as the protection of data, especially of health data. What is called "Good Clinical Practice" (GCP) defines the rules and provides the basis for ensuring the best possible protection of study participants, both under ethical and scientific aspects. Working with sensitive health data requires great diligence and, at least to a certain degree, one must love to pay attention to details. When she was a child, the now 26-year-old Annika Wittig already had a particular liking for tidiness and enjoyed using paper and lists – certainly a good prerequisite for her current job, although today the trend is away from paper and towards digital processes and data storage.

“Fraunhofer ITEM as a renowned research institute attracted me a lot,” says Annika Wittig. In 2014, the institute's scientific library offered an apprenticeship for a media and information services specialist. When her application was declined, she decided to study Medical Information Management at the Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts. In 2017, she applied again, this time for an internship in clinical research – a field of work which, in terms of documentation and information management, is probably one of the most demanding in the life sciences sector. This time she was successful. Shortly thereafter, she continued at the institute as a student assistant and in 2019, after her graduation, was offered a permanent position in volunteer recruitment and documentation. Since 2020, Annika Wittig has been project manager, study coordinator and system administrator of the ClinBase™ documentation system in the Department of Clinical Airway Research. “Today, I am very happy that I followed my gut instincts at the time and tried again at Fraunhofer ITEM. My first professional steps were accompanied by many great colleagues and today I am actually in charge of a 40-member study team in an investigator-initiated trial," the Hannover native is proud to say.

A particular challenge and a personal goal of Annika Wittig is to advance the digitization of health data. Her ambition is to record and represent all data of the test persons and related processes in a digital format in the documentation system and ensure that this information can be retrieved, evaluated and verified at any time – or at least pave the way for this.