HUS Helsinki University Hospital – ENDOTARGET Project Coordinator

HUS is the largest provider of specialized healthcare in Finland, with 27.000 top professionals treating nearly 700.000 patients every year. We are in charge of specialized health care in the Uusimaa region with 2.2 million residents. The treatment of many rare and difficult diseases in Finland is nationally centralized to HUS.
Our expertise is internationally recognized and accredited. As a university hospital, we continuously develop and evaluate our treatment methods and activities.
One of the key innovations of HUS is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare. The institution has developed AI algorithms that can be used to predict patient outcomes and improve the accuracy of medical diagnoses. This has led to significant improvements in patient care and has helped doctors make more informed decisions about treatment options.
In addition to its focus on AI, HUS is also committed to advancing medical research in a variety of other areas, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neuroscience. Through its research efforts, HUS aims to develop new treatments and therapies that can improve the lives of patients around the world.

HUS aims to collaborate closely with all its key stakeholders. Together with the University of Helsinki, we form one of the most active clusters of research and education in Europe. The symbiosis between these two organizations enables the integration of research, education, and healthcare. Many researchers at HUS also hold positions at the University, and vice versa. In 2022, we granted 708 research permits, of which 300 were for new research projects. There were 1,200 ongoing studies as of the end of the year under review.
During 2022, we published about 70 doctoral dissertations and we publish approximately 3.000 research articles per year. Currently we are participating in 20 EU-funded research and development projects.

HUS trains the medical professionals of the future. In 2022, the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Helsinki had 3.889 students pursuing studies at HUS. Our hospitals also supervised the internships of 5,050 students from universities of applied sciences and 305 students from vocational education and training institutions.
The other key stakeholders for HUS in medical research are pharmaceutical companies, the four other university hospitals in Finland, as well as the main university hospitals in the Nordic region. There is also intensive cooperation and project specific collaboration with other private sector actors, such as medical technology companies.
We at HUS pride ourselves on the wide-ranging support services we provide to medical research projects and researchers. The aim of the support services at HUS is to offer researchers clear and consistent processes.
HUS has high-quality in-house laboratory services (HUSLAB), exceptional access to patient and patient care data (HUS Acamedic, Data Lake and Biobank), consistent and reliable research support services (HYKS-Institute and the Researcher´s Desk), a large hospital campus with facilities to conduct research and trials, and a pool of trained research nurses.

During 2022 we grew our international cooperation in R&D projects. We acted as coordinators in preparing four EU consortium project applications, two of which were granted funding while one was placed on reserve. We led the funding and consortium agreement negotiations for the Long Covid, ONCOVALUE and ENDOTARGET projects that were granted funding. We launched the Long Covid project that we coordinated, and we participated in 14 ongoing EU projects, two of which we were coordinating (AICCELERATE and BOUNCE).
HUS is the ENDOTARGET project leader. We coordinate and guide our partners to achieve excellence in the research of this incredible project that will bring quality of life to today’s rheumatic diseases patients and take many potential patients of tomorrow off the list.