AURIA CLINICAL INFORMATICS (ACI)

Overview

The information accumulating from the treatment of patients is a valuable data source. Globally, this information is often fragmented, outdated, and of low quality. Researchers and specialists need high-quality information to develop new drugs and forms of care, and to analyze the impact of the current forms of care.

 

A special unit at Turku University Hospital (TUH), Auria Clinical Informatics (ACI), provides Research as a Service (RaaS) for academic researchers and companies. Information sources used in the analysis combine patient data from the Turku University Hospital, hospital districts of Satakunta and Vaasa, and Auria Biobank – the first fully operational biobank in Finland. ACI has access to structural, textual, signal and imaging data that originates from the clinical processes. Together with the medical domain knowledge, advanced statistics, artificial intelligence and visual analytics, this provides a comprehensive ‘360-degree’ view of the patient care.

 

We offer expert services for defining, compiling and analyzing the data. Our RaaS service complies with good research practice and scientific practice by developing, among others, rigorous but enabling privacy policies for register research. In case that clients wish to perform data science themselves (or assisted by our skilled staff), ACI provides safe and efficient cloud computing environment at a dedicated hospital network cluster. This setup eliminates the need for copying and storing sensitive data at clients’ own servers; ACI will take care of all the legal and technical aspects of information security. Currently, the computing environment of ACI has machine learning capabilities through Python, R and ordinary CPU by default. GPU computing is provided as an option through the Finnish CSC IT Center for Science Ltd.

 

ACI is part of a larger healthcare development ecosystem Health Campus Turku (HCT). The ecosystem forms a significant multidisciplinary knowledge cluster within medicine, social and health care, and technology, offering unique opportunities for research, innovation and corporate collaboration. Health Campus Turku collaboration involves the Hospital District of Southwest Finland, the University of Turku, Åbo Akademi University, Turku University of Applied Sciences, Novia University of Applied Sciences and Turku Science Park Ltd. Digital technologies.