Today opened the IBM Watson Health Center in Helsinki, Finland.

The new center will hopefully enable Finnish healthcare to utilize Watson cognitive computing to help doctors improve the health of Finnish citizens, and the center is expected to employ up to 150 consultants in Finland over the next few years.

The IBM Watson Health Center will be a hub for the collaborative future development of data-driven cognitive and artificial intelligence applications and solutions for Finnish healthcare bringing together public and private healthcare organizations, start-ups, pharmaceutical companies, small and medium-sized companies, large corporations, as well as universities and researchers. The center is part of a five-year landmark collaboration agreement between Tekes the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation and IBM.

The new center is anticipated to have several focus areas for healthcare solutions development. These include Watson Health Imaging, Clinical Trial Matching, Drug Delivery & Life Sciences, APIs and population health management. Initially, the key healthcare areas that the center will focus on will cover oncology, genomics and rare disease management. The intent is to provide four distinct research and development environments where healthcare solutions, technology and applications can be tested prior to deployment, including a simulation of a hospital environment, a doctor’s practice, a home environment for remote patient care and a gym environment for those involved in the quantified self-movement (self-knowledge through self-tracking with technology).

Boost innovation in Finland

“Today, The IBM Watson Health Center is officially open for business and we welcome clients, start-ups and developers to come visit us to innovate together. Medical data is expected to double every 73 days by 2020. Let’s use Watson’s cognitive capabilities to harness that data and create insights to deliver better health for Finland and other countries around the world,” said Mirva Antila, the General Manager of IBM Finland.

“I am delighted to see the IBM Watson Health Center open. This center shows IBM’s commitment to our partnership and will enable close collaboration among health-tech companies, top-notch researchers and world-class hospitals to create a strong health eco-system,” said Pekka Soini, Director General of Tekes. “I am positive that Watson cognitive capabilities will further boost innovation in Finland and put us at the forefront of game-changing health transformation, at the European level and in the global marketplace.”