Health technologies, including data analytics tools, can vastly contribute to the improvement of patient outcomes, the performance of health systems and health system governance. Health data are paramount to tailoring personalised medicine services, as health data can be used in scientific research and innovation which help individualise health services and improve treatment quality. The Estonian government has introduced several strategy documents which highlight the importance of preventative and personalised medicine, people-centred healthcare and enabling services based on data analysis.
The Estonian Health Information System (HIS) – as well as other national databases containing data concerning health – provide a unique opportunity for Estonia to introduce e-health services based on big data analysis which can benefit both individual patients and the society as a whole. An example of innovative data analytics tools that can contribute to the achievement of these objectives are clinical decision support systems (CDSS). CDSS are IT-solutions which help clinicians in their decision-making processes by utilising algorithms that combine biomedical know-how, clinical practice guidelines and patient-specific data in order to offer treatment recommendations or in order to identify patients eligible for treatment or research. The novel CDSS use innovative technologies such as machine learning.
Please see more (in Estonian) here in the form of a master thesis prepared by our legal assistant Liisa Maria Kuuskmaa.
