Health sector ecosystem or co-operation networks play a key role in promoting growth. They generate knowledge, skills and solutions that can be used to positively affect people’s health and well-being.

Sitra has started four projects to gather experiences on using data in ecosystems and using fair data economy tools:

• In Northern Ostrobothnia, home care for the elderly is developed using data. The project focuses on data created in home care, surveying the movement of data between different entities, while also aiming to reduce barriers to the use of data collected from multiple sources. The project also aims to increase skills related to using data.

• Six European children’s hospitals are working to promote the use of data in developing research and knowledge asset management in child healthcare. The children’s hospitals form a health data ecosystem and are developing tools for data analysis. The collaboration includes HUS from Finland and children’s hospitals from Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy and Latvia.

• New treatments aim to manage the increasing burden of care related to memory disorders in North Savo in Finland. The project also aims to promote memory health so that fewer people are affected by such disorders or for their onset to be considerably delayed. The project will establish a collaborative network aimed at finding new methods for the promotion of memory health and prevention of memory disorders through the use of data.

• Striving to improve medication safety using data. The project will identify data repositories that can be combined and analysed to provide information on the realisation of medication safety. It will also aim to solve problems related to medication safety, such as possible adverse side effects, and build a basis for the development of innovations that use data. The project will make the expertise of medication safety specialists available to various sectors and enable broad collaboration.

“These projects represent a diverse range of different stakeholders from all over Finland. There are participants from the world of research as well as companies and public healthcare organisations. The goal is to increase the maturity of the selected ecosystems and promote knowledge and skills related to data use,” says Elina Drakvik, Specialist at Sitra.

A common goal of the projects is to streamline the use of diverse data. Sitra’s Rulebook for a Fair Data Economy is one of the sources of guidance that participants can use to agree on common ground rules. The projects, which were selected on the basis of a call for funding, are due to end by the end of May 2023.

The projects are part of Sitra’s Health Data 2030 project, which aims to build solutions, fair rules and a bridge for the cross-border use of health data in Europe and promote the competitiveness of the health sector in Finland.