The THM has appointed Franziska Thieken to the professorship for Medical Hygiene in the Department of Health. Thieken brings a practical combination of clinical neurology, health services research, and digital health and aims to align hygiene research more closely with actual processes in hospitals and outpatient care settings.
After studying medicine at Philipps University Marburg and receiving her license to practice medicine in 2017, she completed her residency in neurology and acquired several additional qualifications, including in emergency medicine, psychotherapy, occupational medicine, digital medicine, and hygiene. In 2021, she completed her doctorate with a dissertation on the effects of chronic respiratory diseases on the autonomic nervous system. Her focus subsequently shifted to the interface between digital applications and the care of people with complex, chronic diseases—for example, Parkinson's disease. Projects at THM , such as the development of the ParDi app for telemonitoring, i.e., remote patient monitoring, demonstrate the connection between digital tools and health services research.
At THM , Thieken doesn't want to treat hygiene as an isolated set of rules, but rather as an integral component of safe, patient-centered care: Hygiene management, risk and process analyses, and user-oriented digital solutions are treated equally alongside traditional infection prevention. She incorporates the holistic dimension of hygiene: For example, limited personal hygiene can be a warning sign of the worsening of chronic diseases. She has already gained experience in interdisciplinary consortia through third-party funded projects. She aims to structure her teaching so that students can directly apply digital care strategies to specific healthcare problems.
Thieken explicitly does not see digitalization as an end in itself: For her, digitalization must simplify processes, enable patient participation, and make care safer. With this in mind, she is involved in several professional associations, such as the German Society for Digital Medicine, and serves as a STEM ambassador to inspire young people to study science.