Healthcare x AI in Finland (1/2)

This article is written by Ms. Kazuko YUMA , Chief Fellow, Institute for International Socio-Economic Studies（NEC Group）

The Third AI Boom
Since 1950ｓ the research on Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been developed, and the public attention was greatly attracted when the technology dubbed “Machine Learning” was progressed where computer itself start to learn from massive data without being programmed.

Several examples were actually introduced to show the excellence of Artificial Intelligence such as “AlphaGo” computer Go program developed by Deep Learning, one method of Machine Learning, defeated a Go world champion and IBM Watson, cognitive computing system, detected within a very short time the name of uncommon disease. Now we are in the third AI boom.

Areas of utilization of AI technologies are very diversified, and, we are expecting that AI is developed and used also in the area of healthcare (health, medical and nursing care).

Recently the Japanese Government Cabinet Office announced “Strategies for future investment 2018” where the data is defined as the source of value in the Digital New Age and the focus is on the evolution of the society utilizing the advanced technologies such as AI and IoT (Internet of Things), and, the establishment of next generation healthcare system is listed as one of the key areas.
The competition is getting fierce not only in Japan, but, globally how to develop and utilize AI technology for the healthcare area.
In this article the situation in Finland where positive challenge is being made for the utilization of AI technology in the healthcare area will be introduced in two successive issues.

Evolution for the year 2020
Finland is famous for its high level of social welfare, but, also famous for its high level of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the world. The development of the ICT sector have improved its international competitiveness.

Nokia, the firm representing Finnish ICT industry, has recently been struggling financially due to the failure in the business area of smartphone.
Finland has only 5.5 million population and the economy is heavily dependent on the global export business. The decline of ICT industry represented by Nokia is regarded as national crisis. The government, therefore, has positioned the advanced technologies of AI and IoT as one of the mainstays of the export business and endeavor to develop and utilize these technologies in order to be a global leader in that area.

On the other-hand the typical social issue Finland is now facing with is one of the reasons why they have to accelerate the utilization of AI. Finland is suffering from problems of the decrease of population and lack of labor forces due to aging society which is same as in Japan.

It should be the responsibility of local government “Kunta” who provides Finnish citizens with medical service and social welfare. If the trend of declining birthrate and a growing proportion of elderly people continues further, it might be difficult for such small government with weak financial basis to keep providing such medical and social welfare services. The Finish government is progressing the initiative of “SOTE, evolution of medical service and social welfare” for the year 2020.

Reform of the social system by stored data
The initiative is aimed at providing integrated medical service and social welfare not in the unit of local government “Kunta” but in 18 wide area cooperation regions, and also is aimed at widening the options for each individual to select services to properly match with its own needs and requirement.
AI is expected to be a driving force to realize this reform of social system.

The advantage of Finland in this healthcare area is that the highly qualified and large quantity of medical data is centrally stored.

Every Finnish citizen is numbered with Social Security Number HETU, and this number is widely and cross-sectionally used not only for digital health insurance card (KELA card) but also in government administration service, tax, medical, banking services.

In 2007 the national medical information archive “Kanta” was inplementde. Stored medical data are properly linked with the national security number HETU for sharing national level. Such a platform promotes to develop and usethe AI.