The Ministry of Education and Culture funds Arcada’s new research programme

Published: 15.12.2020 / Research / Blog

Arcada is very delighted over the funding decisions made at the Ministry of Education and Culture. Arcada has been granted strategic research funding for the research program “AI driven Nordic Health and Welfare“. The research program will start in late 2020 and go on til summer 2023. The total amount of funding is 625 000 euros.

Artifical Intelligence and transdisciplinarity in focus

Arcada’s successful application was drawn up by a transdisciplinary team at Arcada in April 2020, consisting of almost 20 researchers, teachers and administrative staff at Arcada. Arcada will build up a strong research cluster in collaboration with three strategic key actors: Mälardalen University in Sweden, Åbo Akademi University and Folkhälsan.

The overall aim of the research programme is to develop a long-lasting programme and network in health technology to develop AI-supported and smart digital solutions in the area of social and health care based on Nordic social design and values.

The aims are to:

  1. Explore ethically sustainable, evidence based, trustworthy and user-friendly AI driven solutions with a transdisciplinary approach. Work Package 1: Magnus Westerlund, Henrika Franck, Christa Tigerstedt. Title: Trustworthy AI in Health and Well-being.
  2. Develop theoretical knowledge in AI as a basis for applying AI in different care contexts. Work Package 2: Kaj-Mikael Björk, Leonardo Espinosa. Title: Efficient and privacy enabled AI research in different domains.
  3. Develop AI-supported and smart solutions, applications, models, services and interventions in the area of health and welfare from different perspectives. Work Package 3: Leonardo Espinosa, Jukka Surakka; Dennis Biström, AI enabled social robots. Work Package 4: Jonny Karlsson, Thomas Hellstén, Annikki Arola; Ira Jeglinsky. AI enabled health promotion. Work Package 5: Jonas Tana, Pauleen Mannevaara, Ira Jeglinsky, Camilla Wikström-Grotell, AI enabled health behavior change. Work Package 6: Management and dissemination. Camilla Wikström-Grotell, Henrika Franck, Elina Sagne-Ollikainen.

News article about the funding at the Ministry of Education and Culture webpage (in Finnish) External link

For more information on the research program, please contact Vice rector for Research and Innovation Henrika Franck, henrika.franck(a)arcada.fi.

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Finland is in the process of change in our health care system. The Nordic well-fare system is challenged in Finland, for instance, due to difficulties in attracting nurses, changing demographics in Finland, and a general pressure to reduce costs in the whole public sector. This poses severe challenges for the entire healthcare sector. Can Machine Learning (i.e., the subfield of Artificial Intelligence, which focuses on having a machine imitate intelligent human behavior) be used to understand relationships between different critical properties of our healthcare system? Yes, it can! An excellent example of how this can be done is found in a scientific paper by Hu et al. (2020), where the authors investigated nurses' willingness to report errors in a specific geographical area of the US.

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Arcada awarded €500,000 to further develop trustworthy AI

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Category: Research