The EU project MIDAS (Meaningful Integration of Data Analytics and Services, funded under the call SC1-PM-18-2016 “Big Data supporting Public Health policies”) was launched in November 2016 to deliver a unified data platform for health care and other governmental data accompanied with external open data, in order to enable evidence-based information for decision making and new services. The platform is expected to have an impact not only at regional, but also at national and European levels.
A motivation for the MIDAS platform development is that health care systems store vast amounts of heterogeneous data without too much harmonized governing policies and means for secondary use of the data. Moreover, policy makers and owners or gatekeepers of the data do not have the capability to manage all the sources of the data, and therefore they also lack the capability to create, extract and take action on it.
The MIDAS project will involve researchers, managers of the health care systems, patients and citizens in the participating regions. The University of Oulu and VTT are the Finnish representatives among the thirteen MIDAS partners. The overall project co-ordinator of MIDAS is Ulster University.
At the University of Oulu the Centre for Health and Technology (CHT) and Martti Ahtisaari Institute participate in the project.
More information:
Research professor Minna Pikkarainen
Oulu Business School, Martti Ahtisaari Institute & VTT
Minna.Pikkarainen[at]oulu.fi, Minna.Pikkarainen[at]vtt.fi