Nordic Health Data Spaces (NHDS)
NHDS
Funders
Project information
Project duration
-
Funded by
Other International
Project coordinator
University of Oulu
Contact information
Project leader
- Postdoctoral Researcher
Contact person
Other persons
- ProjektikoordinaattoriElina Salla
- Anna Sachinopoulou
Researchers
Project description
The Nordic region has few urban centres and vast sparsely inhabited areas. The need for accessible health services has led to some forms of collaboration, but cross-border sharing of health data is still a challenge. The European Health Data Space (EHDS) offers potential for innovation and future sustainable services in the region, and addresses this challenge. The project will address the region's readiness to adopt policy and legislation related to EHDS, discuss its potential, and how the innovation systems and healthcare systems should adjust and apply the EHDS policy to leverage innovation and create sustainable societies.
Common values and long-standing traditions across the Nordic countries have facilitated similarities in health data factors such as health registries, digital maturity, or common metadata standards for coding medical data. The project helps ensure that the work already done will be taken into account by those involved in the EHDS decisions, and make sure that they also address the sparsely populated areas.
In sustainable economies, critical mass is important to be able to transfer knowledge, influence people or carry out socially and ecologically sustainable development of the region. By ensuring data sharing across borders and re-use of health data, critical mass needed for the innovation of the region's companies can be achieved.
EHDS' aim is also at the empowerment of the patients, leading to services for managing their own health and target prevention. A healthy population in the region is a pre-requisite for productivity, economic competitiveness and further development.
By sharing health related data in an secure and efficient way, the project will also support establishing reliable datasets that will help manage public health. The Sámi population will be one of the target groups while mapping the actors and assessing innovation potential. Furthermore, there will also be a mapping to assess how research health registries at universities and hospitals target the Sámi population.
Overall Objectives
NHDS aims at strengthening local and regional cross-border governance, increase regional cross-border capacity, minimise border obstacles in sharing and re-use of health data, and to achieve a more effective health care system, by realising the following objectives:
- Construct a Baseline for Data Sharing towards Health Data Spaces: Create conditions for secondary use of data; validate the results in use cases in FI, NO, SE; find out how a common health data space could facilitate health service innovation and delivery, and study the environmental effects to health indicators, and preventive healthcare.
- Set a roadmap for preparing the health ecosystem and market for EHDS: Identify the key actors in promoting EHDS, the bottlenecks towards utilisation of EHDS, and improve Digital Skills in the workforce and citizens and increase capacity.
- Ensure ecosystem collaboration: Leveraging the EHDS policy and regulations by creating use cases showcasing the possibilities and benefits of EHDS
Project actions
Project results will be an outcome of the following actions:
- Developing governance models and policy ecosystem to enable cross-border adoption of EHDS int he Interreg Aurora regions
- Assess technical readiness of the Interreg Aurora region for the adoption and implementation of EHDS
- Help develop skills and competencies to facilitate the implementation of EHDS
- Close examination of perceptions of value creation across borders, at local, regional and interregional levels, to understand how EHDS can have an impact
Project results
The main results will be validated through use cases in the three countries. At the same time, the validation will ensure that sharing data across border will enable the much-needed accessible health services, and empowerment of the citizens that can access their data whenever needed. It will pave the way for cross-border re-use of data so that critical mass can be achieved for SMEs and innovation. It will also aim at increasing security in the region and ensure socioeconomic sustainability. The work will continue after the project by the partners and associated partners in their various roles, so that the findings and results of the project can be used while adopting EHDS.
The success of the NHDS project will be characterised based on the following:
- Solutions for legal or administrative obstacles across border identified
- Strategies and actions plans jointly developed with all the stakeholders
- Foundation laid for organisations to cooperate across borders
NHDS Project Partners
Umeå University
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
