01.02.2021

New preventive care for cardiac disease patients

The CleverHealth Network ecosystem coordinated by Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) is soon launching a remarkable project focusing on cardiac disease. The Clever-P project develops new, preventive care to mitigate secondary cardiac events in patients. In the project, HUS is developing digital care paths to provide more personalised care for cardiac patients. The partners collaborating in this project are HUS and biotechnology company Amgen.

In the picture from left: Juha Tuominen, Chief Executive Officer of HUS, Antti Vento, Director of HUS Heart and Lung Center and Niilo Färkkilä, Amgen Country Manager for Finland and the Baltics.

 

The project aims to offer better and even more efficient care to thousands of cardiac disease patients within the HUS primary healthcare. Many of these patients may be at risk for new cardiovascular events, posing a considerable strain to the healthcare system. To personalise intensive support and impactful care for the patients, the information obtained through the HUS data lake will be used as a tool to develop preventive care.

Targeting at identifying high-risk patients

The project partners first aim to identify the patients with the highest risk, who, based on their genetic risk, have a higher probability for secondary cardiac events. They form 5-10 % of all the cardiac patients in primary care, and for them, an intensive care and support will be personalised to prevent secondary cardiac events. The patients with normal risk, amounting to 90 % of cardiac disease patients, will be directed to a research which compares the impact and feasibility of traditional care and digitally supported, renewed care path.

The renewed digital care path brings remarkable benefits to patients

In the Clever-P project, the partners of the collaborative network define together the actual tools and processes that will support the cultivation of information based on health data in predicting and preventing cardiac disease, and to build foundations for the use of genome data. The project also aims to demonstrate the benefits of customer-centric digital care paths in comparison with traditional care paths. In the digital care path, the care personnel and patients will be able to use the Health Village application, which has been developed in HUS earlier.

Personalised care forms the foundation for value-based health care. Director Antti Vento from HUS Heart and Lung Center estimates that the patient care will become more efficient and cost-effective, if the secondary prevention of cardiac disease patients is targeted correctly. For the patients this would mean that the more personalised and effective processes and tools ensure a faster access to care and, in particular, secondary cardiac events can be prevented.  

”HUS has a clear strategy to become the best player in Europe in patient-centered digitalisation of public healthcare. We believe that the partners in this collaborative project have what it takes to develop personalised, world-class solutions with top-level quality assurance and data security,” says Juha Tuominen, the Chief Executive Officer of HUS.

Top talents of their own fields working together for the benefit of patients

The project, which runs within the CleverHealth Network, engages HUS and Amgen Europe, which both contribute to the project with millions of euros, and bring strong expertise and information for the implementation of the project. The multi-disciplinary project brings together HUS’s medical expertise and patient data from their data lakes and technology expertise from Amgen.

The pharmaceutical company Amgen brings their top expertise on bio technologies to the project. Niilo Färkkilä, Country Manager for Finland and the Baltics comments: ”We are excited to develop a partnership with an innovative actor such as HUS. Together we can develop the care process to better identify patients with a higher risk for secondary cardiac events, and to treat them more efficiently. this project with where the best practices of healthcare systems are brought together. Together, we can improve the impact of the care and design better approaches to reduce the risk of recurrent events.”

The Project Director of CleverHealth Network Mirka Tammi concludes: ”The joint Clever-P project is an example of a project for which the CleverHealth Network ecosystem funded by Business Finland exists. The projects provide us with concrete new tools to solve a number of challenges in healthcare, and we will be able to help as many patients as possible.”

More information:

Juha Sinisalo, Head of Department, HUS Heart and Lung Center
Tel. 050 427 9007, e-mail: juha.sinisalo(at)hus.fi

Timo Seppälä, Government Affairs Senior Manager, Amgen AB subsidiary in Finland,
Tel. +358 40 5180328, e-mail: timo.seppala(at)amgen.com

CleverHealth Network is health technology ecosystem coordinated by HUS in which companies and health care experts together develop better treatment solutions. Product and service innovations are based on HUS’s extensive health data and the leading expertise of clinicians. The participants of the ecosystem, funded by Business Finland, include BCB Medical, BC Platforms, CGI, Elisa, Fujitsu, GE, Innofactor, Microsoft, Pfizer, Planmeca, Productivity Leap, Roche, Takeda, Tieto and Varian.