Innokas Medical is a partner in a consortium which aims to co-create a patient solution for stroke prevention and diagnosis

The collaborative consortium has received a significant funding from Business Finland. This two-year Stroke-DATA -project, which is one part of Business Finland’s Smart Life program, is carried out in cooperation with various research organizations, hospitals and companies. The project is led by the Professor of Connected Health in University of Oulu and VTT Technical Research of Finland, Minna Pikkarainen.

Innokas Medical is a partner in a consortium, which is co-creating and validating a patient solution for stroke prevention, and a decision support system to both improve stroke diagnosis and to develop a system dynamic model for predictive impact evaluation of the diagnostics of stroke cases.

”The solution to be developed during the project will utilize new types of technologies and artificial intelligence to enable the assessment and early identification of stroke cases. It aims to support patients in preventive measures and to assist nursing staff in making treatment decisions and planning the patient’s care path”, tells Pauli Innamaa, working as Head of Concepts and Methods at Innokas Medical.

The solution will be significant for both national and global healthcare. According to the studies, cerebrovascular disorder is even third most common cause of deaths in Finland. Globally, the stroke disease is being listed as fourth most common. In addition to mortality, the care path of stroke from acute treatment to long-term rehabilitation and then back home or to a medical facility is a significant challenge – for both patients and nursing staff.

“The aim of our innovation is to reduce the total costs of healthcare, the incidence of strokes and the mortality of stroke patients, and to improve the quality of life of those patients who suffer from it. Constantly evolving technologies and the use of machine learning and data analytics in medical technology solutions will enable all this to happen”, Innamaa continues.

“The multidisciplinary character and extensive technological knowhow of this consortium guarantee an optimal team for the development work for this new kind of solution – through which we can contribute to improve healthcare all over the world.”

The project is carried out in cooperation with various research organizations, hospitals and companies. In addition to Innokas Medical, the other consortium participants are, e.g., the Department of Imaging, Physics and Technology in the University of Oulu, the Oulu University Hospital, the Martti Ahtisaari Institute of Global Business and Economics in the University of Oulu Business School, the University of Eastern Finland, the Kuopio University Hospital, the Technical Research Centre of Finland VTT, and some other Finnish healthcare technology companies. The project tightly cooperates with University of Singapore as well. The aim of the project is to develop a solution that can be utilized worldwide.

”We are honored to be part of the collaborative consortium, where Innokas is able to utilize our earlier experience and knowledge in, e.g., system specification, quality and regulatory compliance, risk management, usability engineering, data-analytics and software engineering”, Innamaa tells and continues:

“The multidisciplinary character and extensive technological knowhow of this consortium guarantee an optimal team for the development work for this new kind of solution – through which we can contribute to improve healthcare all over the world. This reminds us how important and meaningful our work in the healthtech industry is.”

The collaborative consortium received total of 5,7 million of euros of funding from Business Finland. It is part of Business Finland’s Smart Life program launched in the spring 2019. The program aims to speed-up the innovation development and internationalization projects of healthcare technology companies.