Diagnosis: human or machine?

Martin Huhn, Professor for Predictive Maintenance and Condition Monitoring at the Technical University of Lübeck, deals with the diagnostics of machines in his professional environment, more precisely with fault diagnosis. Predictive maintenance is required to prevent such errors from occurring in the first place. For these, a prediction is made using sensors and vibrations, and error algorithms are created.

Alexander Münchau, Professor of Neurology at the, is surprised that a machine can also speak or even be felt University of Luebeck. Among other things, he researches rare diseases and sometimes he has to tell his patients that he doesn’t know what they have. A machine that diagnoses completely objectively would sometimes be desirable.

Daniel Scholz knows that a good psychotherapist always needs physicality and subjective feelings, Professor for musicians’ health at the Lübeck University of Music. In his consultation hours, he primarily treats musicians with focal dystonia, a task-specific movement disorder. It becomes clear once again that this diagnosis is no longer just a motor disorder, but that the brain can also be involved and why it still requires creative drive and individual experience in composing and playing the guitar.

Moderated by Johanna Helbing, communications officer at the Technical University of Lübeck, the podcast from Lübeck to the power of 3 once a month topics of research, culture and society. Representatives of the three universities involved in the project (Lübeck University of Music, Lübeck University of Applied Sciences and Lübeck University of Applied Sciences) and, depending on the topic, an expert as a guest are invited.
The podcast is available through the website www.gedankenspruenge-podcast.de and all common platforms ready for retrieval. The episodes go online on Wednesdays in the middle of the month.

Knowledge transfer, mutual dialogue and new ideas – this is what Lübeck stands for 3. The initiators and representatives of the three universities see their own podcast as an important building block to stimulate discourse with society about science and culture.

The discussion round in episode 22

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Martin Huhn is a PhD mechanical engineer and worked for a long time in the wind industry before moving to the TH Lübeck as a professor for predictive maintenance and condition monitoring in 2020 with his accumulated knowledge. In condition monitoring, Dr. Huhn first worked intensively on monitoring the condition of centrifugal pumps and later on wind turbines. One focus here is vibration analysis. Many types of damage can be detected based on machine vibrations. Predictive maintenance goes one step further and predicts the condition of the machine. This enables spare parts to be procured in good time and is used for maintenance planning.

Prof. Dr. medical Alexander Munchau studied medicine in Hamburg and Berlin. He is spokesman for the Center for Rare Diseases at the University of Lübeck and since 2020 he has been Director of the Institute for Systemic Motor Research at the University of Lübeck. In 2017 he founded the German Academy for Rare Neurological Diseases (DASNE). As neurologist he knows how a diagnosis is made and how difficult it can sometimes be for those affected to get there – especially when it comes to rare diseases. In addition to diagnostics, he is also looking for new paths in research: Most recently, this led him to Lapland, where he offered a new form of treatment for Tourette’s.

Prof. Dr. Daniel Sebastian Scholz has been a professor for musicians’ health at the Lübeck University of Music and the University of Lübeck since 2022. Previously, he worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Music Physiology and Musicians’ Medicine (IMMM) at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media (HMTMH), where he also taught jazz composition, arrangement and educational psychology. Scholz studied psychology with a neurophysiological and clinical focus in Marburg and jazz composition with a supplementary subject jazz guitar in Osnabrück. He also received his doctorate from the Center for Systemic Neurosciences in Hanover, where he qualified as a psychological psychotherapist specializing in behavioral therapy.

The moderator Johanna Helbing has been a communications officer at the Technical University of Lübeck since the end of 2021. She studied European media culture at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and Lyon and has been part of the editorial team for the podcast since it was born in May 2021.

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