How public and private collaboration drives digital change in Finland

Honkanen explains that because HUS is a cluster of hospitals it can call on a rich resource of information and expertise.

“The biggest fruits come from situations where you can reach over the whole care continuum,” he says.

This collaboration between HUS Helsinki University Hospital, Finnish health technology company Planmeca and Canadian IT services group CGI, gives clinicians cloud-based access to tools to support decision making in the emergency room, when a radiologist or surgeon is not at hand.

“You can’t develop these things anywhere other than a hospital structure,” says Honkanen.

“You have to test the algorithm all the time. It might look fine in a data lake but when you try to make it work in real life, you can get into all kinds of technical problems.”

CleverHealth Network project director Mirka Tammi says that development initiatives like this are so complex that it is not enough for HUS to work with a single partner – they require different competencies from different companies. And clinical expertise and validation are essential.

“The data lake is the core of all our projects,” she says. “We want to use health data in new and clever ways, combining it with the competencies of the other actors in the ecosystem.”

Clever clinicians

“It’s a win/win situation for HUS, and very much something that is the future,” Tammi continues.

“Multi-partner projects where clinicians and private companies are working together. Our experience is that it isn’t very good if technology companies are just creating tools without help from clinicians. A startup might create something, only for HUS clinicians to say they don’t need it.”

Another project, eCare for Me, also uses AI technology with the aim of developing tools for early rare disease detection, automated diagnostics, treatment selection and advanced homecare.