Research Council of Finland grants funding for research into ICT and secure use of data in health

The Research Council of Finland has granted a total of 8.6 million euros for three-year projects that will explore the limits of ICT and the secure use of data in health. The funding will be divided between 25 applications, which puts the overall application success rate at 34 per cent.

According to Esa Vakkilainen of the Research Council of Finland’s Scientific Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering, the international reviewers considered the applications to be of a very high quality and ambition level. “The funded applications are very ambitious and significant in terms of their research topics”.

In addition to the review reports from international experts, the funding decisions were made taking into account the international nature of the projects, cooperation with the private and public sectors, intersectoral mobility and the use of the research organisations’ own resources to carry out the research. The funding is granted to the host organisations, which manage the use of the funding.

These decisions are the last funding decisions to be made under the Research Council of Finland’s and Business Finland’s joint ICT 2023 Research, Development and Innovation Programme. ICT 2023 is a ten-year programme aimed at strengthening high-quality ICT research and enabling the development of products, services and innovations.

The Research Council of Finland has opened 21 calls for applications within the programme, both national calls and international joint calls. The funding that has been open for application has totalled 100 million euros. The ICT 2023 programme has also provided funding to Finnish parties to ICT projects that have been successful in international joint calls.

Leena Ukkonen, Chair of the Scientific Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering, said: “The programme has advanced ICT research in a variety of thematic areas.” Ukkonen is pleased that the themes of the programme’s calls have been very dynamic and have helped to anticipate future needs. The themes have been designed to achieve new application areas and challenge researchers to take on issues of societal importance.

The Scientific Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering will continue to monitor the ongoing projects and their impact.