Three innovation environments at KI receive funding from Vinnova
Vinnova is investing in eleven innovation environments in precision health that will pave the way to more preventive, accurate healthcare with greater equity, while helping Sweden strengthen its position as a leading life science nation. Of the eleven innovation environments selected, three are at Karolinska Institutet.
Within these innovation environments, companies, healthcare providers, universities, civil society and patients will work together to generate more accurate solutions across the entire healthcare spectrum, both in promotion and prevention strategies as well as in diagnostics and treatment.
"Sweden needs an innovation environment that stimulates and facilitates national precision medicine studies for patients with cancer. Our innovation environment has gathered a number of important actors, all of whom need to be involved to make this possible. Testbädden (Testbed Sweden) has extensive reach in terms of national and international initiatives and groups that can contribute and collaborate," says Richard Rosenquist Brandell, Chair, Genomics Medicine Sweden (GMS) management group, Professor of Clinical Genetics at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery.
This amounts to a total investment of SEK 323 million. The innovation environments receive funding of up to SEK 8 million per year for either 2.5 or 5 years. The innovation environments at KI that receive appropriations are:
- Swedish AI Precision Pathology (2.5 years) New AI-based diagnostic solutions based on pathology image analysis. The research coordinator at KI is Mattias Rantalainen at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Several regions, companies and a patient organisation are part of the innovation environment.
- PREDEM (5 years) Precision diagnostics and treatment in dementia and other cognitive disorders, with participating regions, companies and interest groups. The coordinator at KI is Linus Jönsson at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society.
- Prevention and early therapy of rheumatoid arthritis using precision medicine (2.5 years) Better detection, preventive measures and treatment for people who have or are at risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis. The innovation environment includes one other university, one region and several companies. The contact person at KI is Per-Johan Jakobsson at the Department of Medicine, Solna.
The innovation environment Test Bed Sweden for Clinical Trials and Implementation of Precision Health in Cancer Care (5 years), which is coordinated by the Stockholm School of Economics, includes GMS and SciLifelab. The project IndiCell (5 years) does also have KI researchers involved. Fredrik Lanner at the Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology, is leading the KI part of the project.