The secondary use of Kanta data supports the effectiveness of treatment and facilitates the monitoring of services
The secondary use of Kanta data has expanded during 2022. The expanding secondary use of Kanta data in research and knowledge-based management benefits society as a whole. Kela is continually developing the Kanta data platform, through which national social welfare and health care data capital can easily be obtained for secondary use with a high level of data security.
Kanta Services is a system used throughout Finland for the safe storage and seamless use of social welfare, health care and wellbeing data. Kanta is developed in collaboration between the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare and Kela, together with social and health care operators. The Kanta data platform is a progressively evolving data system solution that enables the secondary use of Kanta data. The available Kanta datasets and their descriptions are published in THL's Data Resources Catalogue (aineistokatalogi.fi).
In 2022, as a result of the development work, the data available for secondary use covers medicine data on prescriptions, vaccination data, laboratory data, diagnostic data, procedure data, as well as physiological measurements and medical statements. Towards the end of the year, the first social welfare client data and parts of records of emergency care will be made available for secondary use.
The secondary use of health and social services data is becoming increasingly necessary. In addition to the one-off Kanta data provision to Findata for secondary use, prescription, diagnostic and laboratory data is supplied on a continuous basis from the Kanta data platform to THL, Fimea and Valvira for the purpose of carrying out their official duties. THL and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health also receive regular data on the Kanta Services usage volumes.
The continuous provision of data from the social welfare monitoring register, emergency care records and laboratory data is scheduled to start in 2023 through THL's data provision service.
Ensuring citizens' data protection is a priority
The Act on the Secondary Use of Health and Social Data enables the extensive use of health and social services data for statistics, research, development and innovation activities, teaching, knowledge management, and for authorities’ steering, supervision, planning and investigation tasks.
Data protection is a priority in the Act on the Secondary Use of Personal Data. As a rule, anonymised statistical-level data is used. Data users only process personal data in separately specified and secure operating environments. Individuals cannot be identified from the data resources. In line with the principle of data minimisation, only the amount of data that is necessary for the implementation of the research is provided.
The first practical results have been achieved in the treatment of diabetes
The secondary use of the significant national data resources held in the Kanta Services is being developed in the Valtava project as part of the Toivo programme. In a pilot project, the laboratory data of diabetes patients in the Patient Data Repository has for the first time been transferred to THL, where it will be utilised in the national diabetes register, which is currently under development. On the basis of the data accumulated in the register, it has already been possible to successfully demonstrate improvements in the development of diabetes care and thus to improve the standard of diabetes care.
Valuable experience was gained in terms of data quality from the pilot diabetes project, which used laboratory data. The quality assurance of health and social services data is a key process covering the entire data life cycle. In this process, each data provider or processor has an important role to play. The regional and temporal coverage of data is a crucial area of quality improvement.
Development continues with new Kanta data content
The development of the secondary use of Kanta data production takes place in collaboration between THL, Kela and Valvira. Data content is processed on the Kanta data platform into a format that makes it easier to utilise for secondary use. Kela supplies the data to THL, which in turn analyses and reports the content on to the wellbeing services counties, for example. The aim is to expand the utilisation of Kanta data for secondary use and to gradually replace the current separate data collections.
The development of social welfare client data utilisation continues, and as the data gradually accumulates in the client data archive, it will be further developed to be utilised in the social welfare monitoring register as well.
In the next project period, the development of new laboratory tests and the contents of the communicable diseases register will continue. With regard to the effectiveness of treatment, significant data includes data content developed to ensure access to treatment and to assess the need for treatment.
Further information:
Anne Kaiterniemi, Chief Product Owner, Kela (firstname.lastname@kela.fi)