Case Study: DZD Scientists achieve unified diabetes research insights with Neo4j

DZD Greatly Improves Research Capabilities with Graph Technology

The German Centre for Diabetes Research (DZD) is a national research network of roughly 400 scientists working to understand and prevent diabetes. Faced with millions of distributed, heterogeneous datasets from basic research and clinical trials and no shared central system, DZD needed a unified master dataset so researchers could compare results, avoid redundant work, and gain holistic insights into disease causes and progression.

DZD built DZDconnect, a Neo4j-based graph layer that links disparate relational databases and standardizes metadata for intuitive querying and visualization. The graph enabled rapid model development and data integration, revealed previously hidden relationships for follow-up studies, reduced repeat measurements, and set the stage for future ML/NLP-driven analysis and broader data consolidation.

DZD Scientists

Alexander Jarasch

Bioinformatics and Data Management