The multidisciplinary collaboration between Helsinki University Hospital (HUS), companies and research institutions generatesnew solutions for identified clinical needs by using health and wellbeing data. This results in impactful treatments that improve the quality of life for patients and raise the efficiency of health care processes. There are several ongoing collaborative projects with some of them already making progresstowards commercialisation. New projects are also being built as we speak. Concrete results entail new health care solutions and support to help patients suffering from acute leukemia and gestational diabetes. Dialysis patients also benefit from the work done within the ecosystem. 

CleverHealth Network (CHN) is an innovation ecosystem which brings together health care experts and companies from different fields such as health technology, ICT and pharma, to co-develop better treatment solutions for Finns and successful export products for companies. Product and service innovations are based on HUS’s extensive health data, the leading expertise of clinicians and identified clinical needs. The innovative collaboration model of CHN between public and private sector has turned out to be very important in the times of change of health care. The operations of the ecosystem have been systematically developed during the five years it has been running — thanks to the collaboration between HUS, Spinverse and participating companies. The ecosystem member companies are highly committed to the current mode of operations and co-development of Finnish health care. 

Results showcased at the CleverHealth Network annual event  

In the CHNproject focusing to treat acute leukemia, the project members have developed aclinical tumour board application. It will be used in weekly oncological meetingsfor clinical patent work as well as in research. The project uses novel data sources, for example by quick analysis of the microscope results by means of computer vision. The aim is to automate cancer diagnostics and ease the election tosuitable treatment. In this project, HUS collaborates with Tietoevry, Productivity Leap and Hematoscope. Professor Kimmo Porkka, who leads the project, says: “The analysis tool based on machine learning willlead to a fast and efficient diagnostic process, which in turn enables the election of patients to personalised treatment and clinical drug trials. This way, clinicians and nurses will have more time to focus on patient work.”  

The Home dialysis project has implemented an automated end-to-end service solution toprovidea safe home-based dialysis for dialysis patients, thus easing their daily life. At the same time, medical staff has access to an easy-to-use user interface providingreal-time data. “All data related to the treatment is automatically transferred from the tools or through digital forms filled in by the patient and the data will therefore be always visible for the patient and medical staff — rather than every 2-3 months in conjunction with control visits to hospital. In addition, the patient has access to an order system which helps them order the exact dialysis equipment they need regularly,” explains Nephrologist Virpi Rauta, who is the leading researcher in the project. This project is the result of collaboration between HUS, Aalto University and University of Helsinki and Gillie.  

In eMOMGDM, in turn, the project partners have co-developed a Mobile application to treat gestational diabetes, which improves the glycaemic control for expecting mothers by bringing real-time data on glycaemic levels and the lifestyle choices of mothers-to-be. The solution entails user interfaces for both patients and medical staffas well as their integration into a service solution improving the self-care of gestational diabetes. In addition to HUS, the project includes Aalto University and University of Helsinki with Fujitsu and Elisa as company partners. ”The preliminary results on the impact of the application to the glucose levels of mothers with gestational diabetes are very promising and we soon intend to pilot the application on a wider scale in maternity and child health clinics,” Development Manager Mikko Kytö says.  

All these three research and development projects have now reached the stage where companies lead the productization and commercialisation work within the development project. The companies in the lead are Tietoevry, Gillie and Fujitsu. 

Aiming for internationalisation and scale-up 

HUS Acamedic is a certified and scalable virtual research and analytics environment for secure processing of health data. It plays an important role in implementing research and development project utilising data. Among other things, HUS Acamedic enables international collaboration in a data secure way without transferring data. The current CHN projects have paved the way by demonstratingcollaborative work between HUS clinicians, ICT experts and participating companiesfor example in harmonising data, data permits, algorithm validation and commercialisation paths. In the future, these learnings will ease the implementation of new projects.   

For the previous two-year period, an internationalisation plan was created for the ecosystemand it is being actively implemented. Thanks to this work, CleverHealth Network has gained wider publicity and global recognition as a good benchmark of a well-functioning health sector ecosystem. Significant international collaboration projects have already been launched (such as EU projects AICCELERATE and Long Covid, led by HUS). The results of current projects have been validated outside Finland and global organisations of the participating companies have been invited to join concrete collaboration activities. Several international delegations have frequently visited HUS to learn more about the CleverHealth Network and its results, which have been showcased in several international conferences and events. “Business Finland has recently granted CleverHealth Network with additional funding for next two-year period. During this period, the key is to launch new projects and increase our international collaboration as well as commercialise and scale up the results we have already achieved,” concludes Ecosystem Coordinator Katariina Rouvinen from HUS.