BC Platforms has secured a multi-year contract to work with three Finnish Hospital District owned Biobanks (Clinical Biobanks) on improving access to, and automated management of, phenotypic, genomic, and clinical data.

The project underpins Finland’s ambition to be a leading country for Real-World Data (RWD) studies, supporting the global development of novel treatments and enhancing the resilience of healthcare systems, the collaborators state. Therapeutic areas of focus will include cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Read more: Real-World Evidence – The time is now

Health data from around 2 million Finnish citizens

The biobanks involved are the Biobank Borealis of Northern Finland (which includes Lapland), Finnish Clinical Biobank Tampere (FCBT), and the Central Finland Biobank in Jyväskylä, all of which have been in operation since 2015. Collectively these Biobanks cover health data from around 2 million Finnish citizens, which is approximately 1/3 of the population. Biobanks have also specific collections, for example the Finnish Maternity Cohort (FMC), which covers samples from almost 1 million mothers nationwide. The Biobanks support research in disease prevention including for example cardiovascular disease, cancer, immunology, and type 1 diabetes.

“This is good news for developing the Finnish healthcare system and its research capabilities.”

“This is good news for developing the Finnish healthcare system and its research capabilities. Consented sample and patient information enables an integrated and automated operating model under Finnish Biobank Act and GDPR. We believe our good quality longitudinal geno-pheno data samples will attract research interest globally. Our partnership with BC Platforms provides us with unique, sophisticated, software tools that significantly reduce the resource needed to administer the data in our Biobank, enabling more focus on making Finland a leading country for Biobank-studies,” says Sanna Siltanen, Director, FCBT.

All these biobanks are members of the FinnGen project and have access to produced genome data.

The partnership was orchestrated by one of Finland’s leading ICMT companies, Istekki, owned by hospital districts and the public sector. The organization acts as a system integrator and project office for the deployment of new technologies.

“We see this partnership opening new strategic health data driven high impact opportunities for Biobanks and the science community.”

“We’re delighted to announce another partnership with these prestigious Finnish Biobanks, and thank Istekki for making it happen. In Finland, where we have our R&D centre, the genetic heritage of the population has significant value in providing clinical insights into the causation and treatment of many diseases. We see this partnership opening new strategic health data driven high impact opportunities for Biobanks and the science community,” says Tero Silvola, CEO of BC Platforms.

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