Increasing the number of consenting adults

Our solution

The key to success is quite often offering tools and services users like to use, which in this case most often is done by offering solutions that help users to get their job done. We were able to serve all different user groups from researchers to local biobanks and FinBB. Working with legacy systems and complex data sets present another type of a challenge, but we were able to tackle those as well in time and budget.

We have created a catalog of samples for researchers to find sample availability according to ICD-10 codes based on a range of criteria. We also implemented a new homepage for Fingenious and implemented a new – from both a design and a technical point of view – interface for researchers.

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The bright idea

Finland and its population are a unique platform for academic and medical research. The role of FinBB is to harness this opportunity and offer researchers the best possible tools for them to be able to conduct research on data of the Finnish population. In the end this makes it possible to develop the best possible medical care to everyone on our planet.

The inevitable challenge

Finland has a very ambitious national strategy for health improvement. The key element in the strategy is to understand that shared health information can lead to shared health benefits.

As part of this strategy, FinBB is a co-operative that was established to commercialize the opportunity of offering Finnish data to medical researchers to allow the development of better care, as well as to return the proceeds more directly to Finnish healthcare to allow more investments for the benefit of Finnish people.

In the early fall of 2019, FinBB was looking for a partner to help them create a new service to publish a catalog of research samples for researchers. The core system, Fingenious, already existed and it was a question of adding a new element alongside it.

Wunderdog was selected as the development partner. With the solution we have built, researchers can now request samples for scientific studies. FinBB had no experience in software development or managing a development team, so we were given a lot of responsibility to provide them with services that were as holistic as possible.

Success in the project led to other projects, such as a campaign to gather consents. By March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was starting to spread in Finland. FinBB needed some quick assistance so they could collect consent from Finnish citizens for their samples to be used by local biobanks to help research new treatments and precautionary procedures. In less than two weeks the campaign should be up and running.

So, how did it go?

The campaign we created together has been a success! In just one week over 10,000 people gave consent for their samples to be used, rising to over 300,000 and counting. The campaign was even endorsed by ex-president Tarja Halonen and promoted by several Finnish celebrities.

The services for researchers in Fingenious have been recognised as a clear leader in the space. This is a very good situation to continue the work for better healthcare.