Healthcare Information Systems Research and Development Unit

The mission of the Healthcare Information Systems Research and Development Unit (HIS R&D Unit) of the University of Kuopio is to promote citizens' wellbeing by utilizing information systems - both at local, national and international levels.The HIS R&D Unit's customers include service provider organizations, software organizations as well as municipal and national public authorities in the domain of health and wellbeing services. The HIS R&D Unit provides, according to its resources, the same services to the higher education domain, too, where its customers include universities' information resources management and software producers for universities (companies and in-house units).

• The core of the unit's activities is applied research that serves particularly the health and wellbeing domain but can be applied domain-independently. The methodological approach is Action Research - "studying by doing".
• The HIS R&D Unit provides the same customers with expert services based on its applied research, in a wide spectrum ranging from consultancy on work development and interaction design, through architectural and integration consultancy, all the way to implementing "product concepts" or prototypes.
• The HIS R&D Unit also provides, according to its resources, educational services based on its applied research, for graduate courses, continuing education and post-graduate education as well as prost-graduate supervision and examination..

The HIS R&D Unit operates as part of the University of Eastern Finland, in close collaboration with related research units and groups, educational programmes, hospital districts, municipalities, software companies and standardization organizations as well as other actors, nationally and internationally. The unit aims at contributing to the establishment of a national centre of expertise in Information Technology and Infomation Management in Wellbeing Services within the Kuopio Welfare Research Centre, on a high international standard.

The unit is on a leading national or international level in the following fields:

• Software architectures, software interoperability, software standards development
• Activity-driven, participative methods for user requirements specification and interaction design
• Using information systems to contribute to social development (IT for Development), China, Africa
• Information systems and information management in healthcare, also information management in social services