Research at the Health Informatics Centre
On this page you will find a description of current and ongoing research projects by the research group Health Informatics, aswell as links to our teams BIT and MINT and their research projects.
Research at BIT
Research at MINT
Research group Health Informatics
Our research focuses on clinical informatics in the areas Patient Centred Information Systems, Decision support and Decision making.
COVID-X
The Health Informatics Centre (HIC) and the Unit for Bioentrepreneurship (UBE) at the Department of LIME, have been granted an EU Innovation Action Grant for the project COVID-X, which aims to contribute to the public health preparedness and response in the context of the ongoing pandemic of COVID-19 and to ensure the availability of critical technologies and tools.
The project COVID-X has been granted an EU Innovation Action Grant in the SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020 strategic call "Medical technologies, Digital tools and Artificial Intelligence (AI) analytics to improve surveillance and care at high Technology Readiness Levels (TRL)".
The researchers at LIME will contribute to the project with CLEOS, a knowledge-based decision support system where the patient interacts directly with the software through a tablet or a computer. The CLEOS system allows the collection of patient symptoms and medical history and summarises and analyses the results as well as providing differential diagnostic suggestions to the responsible physician.
Official website
News on the project
New EU innovation action grant for research project COVID-X 3 September 2020
COVID-X is the project of the month 7 April 2021
COVID-X: 16 AI projects selected 21 May 2021
Principal Investigators
Carl Johan Sundberg, David Zakim
Project members
Sabine Koch, Lena Hanson, Rebecka Skarstam, Magnus Boman, Sokratis Nifakos (application coordinator at KI)
Linked Open Data in the Biomedical Information Area
It appears that the availability of open data would increase evidence of the results of biomedical research, and consequently, of clinical practice. The "Linking Open Data" community (https://lod-cloud.net/) aims at publishing open data sets on the Web, semantically connecting data items belonging to different data sources. The aim of this project is to investigate the current stage of “Linked Open Data” within Biomedical Information area, mainly by reviewing literature.
Project leader
Publications
Nordic eHealth Research Network
The Nordic eHealth Research Network (NeRN) was set on 15.02.2012 by the Nordic Council of Ministers as a subgroup for Nordic Council of Ministers eHealth group. The group collaborates with the eHealth indicator task forces.
The group searches and develops common Nordic indicators for eHealth functionalities and services and tests them to produce Nordic eHealth benchmark data for use by national and international policy makers and scientific communities to support development of Nordic welfare.
Since 2012 the group has made several publications whereof four major official reports:
Nordic eHealth indicators: organisation of research, first results and plan for the future.
Hyppönen H, Faxvaag A, Gilstad H, Hardardottir GA, Jerlvall L, Kangas M, Koch S, Nøhr C, Pehrsson T, Reponen J, Walldius Å, Vimarlund V Tema Nord 2013:522
Nordic eHealth Benchmarking - Status 2014.
Hyppönen H, Kangas M, Reponen J, Nøhr C, Villumsen S, Koch S, Hardardottir GA, Gilstad H, Jerlvall L, Pehrsson T, Faxvaag A, Andreassen H, Brattheim B, Vimarlund V, Kaipio J
TemaNord 2015:539, Nordic Council of Ministers, Stockholm, Denmark. Norden, http://dx.doi.org/10.6027/TN2018-539
Nordic eHealth Benchmarking - From piloting towards established practice
Hyppönen H, Koch S, Faxvaag A, Gilstad H, Nøhr C, Hardardottir GA, Andreassen H, Bertelsen P, Kangas M, Reponen J, Villumsen S, Vimarlund V
Nordic Council of Ministers, http://dx.doi.org/10.6027/TN2017-528
Nordic eHealth Benchmarking – Towards evidence informed policies.
Nøhr C, Faxvaag A, Tsai CH, Audur Hardardottir G, Hyppönen H, Andreassen HK, Gilstad H, Jónsson H, Reponen J, Kaipio J, Voigt Øvlisen M, Kangas M, Bertelsen P, Koch S, Villumsen S, Schmidt T, Vehko T, Vimarlund V
Tema Nord 2020:505
Contact at HIC
TERMINET
TERMINET is a three-year research and innovation project funded under Horizon2020 by the European Union, ending at the end of 2023. The project has been prolonged until March 2024.
The vision of TERMINET is to provide a novel next generation reference architecture based on cutting-edge technologies such as SDN, multipleaccess edge computing, and virtualisation for next generation IoT, while introducing new, intelligent IoT devices for low-latency, market-oriented use cases.
TERMINET’s primary intention is to bring (more efficient and accurate) decisions to the point of interest to better serve the final user targeting at applying distributed AI at the edge by using accelerated hardware and sophisticated software to support local AI model training using federated learning. Our solution aspires to reduce the complexity of the connecting vast number of heterogeneous devices through a flexible SDNenabled middleware layer.
It also aims to design, develop, and integrate novel, intelligent IoT devices such as smart glasses, haptic devices, energy harvesting modules, smart animal monitoring collars, AR/VR environments, and autonomous drones, to support new market-oriented use cases. Great expectation of the proposal is to foster AR/VR contextual computing by demonstrating applicable results in realistic use cases by using cutting-edge IoT-enabled AR/VR applications.
By designing and implementing an IoT-driven decentralised and distributed blockchain framework within manufacturing, TERMINET aims to support maintenance and supply chain optimisation. Our solution intends to apply a vertical security by design methodology by meeting the privacy-preserving and trust requirements of the NG-IoT architecture.
To foster standardization activities for the IoT ecosystem, TERMINET will provide novel disruptive business models. For the evaluation of its wide applicability, TERMINET will validate and demonstrate six proof-of-concept, realistic use cases in compelling IoT domains such as the energy, smart buildings, smart farming, healthcare, and manufacturing.
Using TERMINET to accelerate medical training
In the TERMINET project, Karolinska Institutet (KI) participates via the Health Informatics Centre (HIC) as a use case partner, together with the Swedish SME Alteruna. Alteruna develops training simulators in virtual reality (VR) for surgery and medical treatments targeting both teams and individuals. Their solution supports mobile VR-sets and hand interaction through their own semi-physical middleware solution and enables multiplayer scenarios. Thereby, it allows the integration, not only of the simulators, but also of multiplayer capabilities into the TERMINET architecture.
The use case led by KI and Alteruna will support two of the key technologies of the TERMINET project.
Federated learning for gesture recognition: Firstly, we will adapt a federated learning framework to the gesture recognition solution of the semi-physical hand interaction. The ”weights" of the individual (local) training sessions will be uploaded to a central server and processed there. The new version of the hand interaction algorithm will then be pushed out to the clients.
Edge node computing to render video streams: The other key technology is edge node computing. We will make use of the computing power of the local edge nodes to reduce network latency. It will be especially important for our use case, where we will use video streaming instead of web applications and transitional data only. To render the video stream in the cloud, instead of from the VR device, and to render it locally in the edge node, will assumedly reduce network latency. The video stream will be interactive in the sense that the web browser user will interact in the VR-session by using the web RTC protocol.
Project coordinator
University of Macedonia, Greece
Contacts at HIC
X-eHealth
X-eHealth is a Coordination and Supporting Action funded under Horizon2020 by the European Union, ending in Autumn 2022. stands herein for a project of strategic relevance for tomorrow’s European eHealth Union. The underlying idea of this project is to develop the basis for a workable, interoperable, secure and cross border Electronic Health Record exchange Format in order to lay the foundation for the advance of eHealth sector while using the 3 pillars put forward by the EC as reference.
Aimed at promoting a faster and sustainable EU digital transformation, this Cooperative and Support Action is made up of 8 Work Package in which 4 exclusively focus on technical-functional activities (WP4 to WP7). From Generic Aspects to System Architecture and Integration, passing by Functional and Technical Specifications, X-eHealth objective is to move towards a uniform interoperable data-sharing format framework. In addition, to enhance EU’s public health state of play, WP1 and WP8 are responsible for implementation studies, practicality and continuity of eHealth interoperability development. On this basis and building upon the already in place Patient Summary, X-eHealth purpose is to develop the foundations for a common framework for medical imaging, discharge letters, laboratory results and rare diseases to flow both alongside citizens care pathway and across health entities between EU Member States and Neighbour Countries. Focus on cross-border services, this consortium aims to advance an interoperable Common European Health Data Space for citizens and health providers engagement in accordance with privacy and cybersecurity regulations.
To achieve this end, X-eHealth gathers 36 consortium partners plus 5 collaborative partners and 6 eHealth skilled experts, eager to develop the abovementioned 4 domains, and distinguished by policy and political actors mixed with national competent authorities to indeed concretely plan, implement and maintain national eHealth infrastructures.
Project coordinator
Ministry of Health, Portugal