Business Finland, the Finnish government organization for innovation, granted 3 million euros in funding for the PRIVASA project led by the University of Turku. The project boosts data-driven research, development and innovation by making it easier for health technology businesses that operate on the international market to access and share health data without compromising individuals’ privacy.
Finnish synthetic data to become an international concept
PRIVASA develops tools that apply the latest AI methods and privacy-preserving algorithms to convert sensitive data into a safe but useful anonymous format that is suitable for medical research, testing and validation.
Within the project, BCB Medical focuses on developing personalized data into disease-specidic synthetic data that can be productized. Synthetic data is an algorithmically created data set that preserves the properties of data while also perserving the privacy of the individuals.
“We aim to turn the Finnish synthetic data into an international concept, and to aid the medical research industry to answer the following questions: how to prove the efficacy of a product in a defined group of patients, how to better understand the therapy area, and how to test the hypotheses faster. Our data helps the physicians when they need to choose between therapies for specific patient groups”, says Lisse-Lotte Hermansson, Chief Scientific Officer of BCB Medical.
Wide co-operation of companies, faculties and organizations
Besides BCB Medical, the other companies involved in the PRIVASA project are Bayer, BC Platforms, Fujitsu Finland, MVision, PerkinElmer, Polar Electro, and Yield Systems. The University of Turku faculties of Technology, Medicine, Law, and Economics offer their knowledge in technical solutions as well as in ethics, corporate responsibility and legal aspects. Other project partners are the Turku University of Applied Sciences, Finnish governement’s research institution VTT, Auria Biobank, Turku Science Park, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare THL, and Health and Social Data Permit Authority Findata.
More information:
Lisse-Lotte Hermansson
Chief Scientific Officer
lisse-lotte.hermansson@bcbmedical.com
