Helse Midt-Norge wants to colloborate with NorwAI

Can artificial intelligence contribute when the major challenges within the health sector seriously manifest themselves in the next ten years? Yes, says Helse Midt-Norge, which recently sat down with the NorwAI management team to discuss collaboration opportunities.

- What a good match! says managing director Trond Utne of Helse Midt-Norges ICT unit HEMIT enthusiastically after an exciting meeting where the health organization presented themselves on opportunities in the large challenges facing the future welfare state.

To illustrate, Hemit CEO Trond Utne illustrates the challenges ahead demograhic numbers:  

- Today, 1 in 8 in Norway work in health and care services, including primary health services. If we make a linear development towards 2060, 1 in 3 in Norway will have to work in health and care.

- It goes without saying that this is not possible, and some of the solutions lie in digialiization and technology development, says Trond Utne.

Match between the two

NorwAI, which contribute with research-driven innovation particularly aimed at larger Norwegian organizations and partners, is, together with the rest of the NTNU environment within artificial intelligence, the country's strongest professional environment within the sector.

Helse Midt-Norge is the region's largest employer with 22,000 employees. Hemit is the regional ICT unit for Health Central Norway with approximately 400 employees at various locations providing technology and ICT services linked to all hospitals and healthcare organizations in the region.

Own competence environment

Trond Utne says that the dialogue with NorwAI showed that an important success factor for exploiting the opportunities in the use of artificial intelligence is that the organizations are large enough to have their own competence environment that can meet the research needs and onboard results.

- Helse Midt Norge contribute with both exciting and socially useful usecases to research in combination with access to structured datasets.

- Hemit's competence environment that can be a bridge builder to hospitals and facilitate access to data for research purposes. We have what it takes for NorwAI’s research to brush up on many of the exciting challenges we have to solve in order to offer a better and more efficient healthcare service in the years to come, says the HEMIT director

Deep into AI

HEMIT is already deep into AI research. By collaboration with NTNU’s Open AI Lab researchers were enable to find new solutions to diagnose cerebral palsy in babies by afrtificial intelligence. The parents can film their child and get an answer as to whether the baby will develop CP or not.

One of the most important prerequisites for successful innovation research is data access. Director Trond Utne says that this autumn HEMIT has approved a final report from a preliminary project on health data for research purposes. In 2023 the project will be implemented.

- The health data set will be tested in 2023. It will be a valuable tool for possible collaboration with NorwAI, says Trond Utne.

Individual cancer treatment

Hemit also finance and runs a number of research-driven projects today. In the Clinical Academic Groups Program - CAG – professional interaction across sectors is stimulated by strengthening the cooperation between the health institutions and universities and colleges in the region. A close example is the program UNICAN CAG (UNIte AI and CANcer), which starts in 2023. year. The vision is to ensure that all cancer patients have the opportunity for individually tailored treatment by using AI tools in clinical decision support. The project has three work packages, all of which include artificial intelligence. The program can well be read as an AI playbook:

1. AI for improved prediction of clinical course and prognosis in breast cancer and lung cancer
2. Teaching digitization and the use of AI for healthcare personnel and medical students
3. Provide safe access to digital tissue sections and AI tools for clinicians, researchers, university teachers and students