An engineer by nature and a physicist by heart navigating the Health sector
I’m Kari, a scientist in my forties, born in Ostrobotnia, currently living and working in Tampere. My background is engineering and physics, and perhaps I could say that I’m an engineer by nature and a physicist by heart. Most of my professional career I’ve worked with medical images and other signals and done quite a bit of project preparation management and delivery as well. My role is to work as a data analysis expert for various customers that operate with data related to health. My title is Data Scientist.
What’s your biggest passion(s)?
I enjoy diving deep into problems that have real world applications and potential to make a lasting effect. I’m a bit of a tinkerer, so coming up with practical and clever solutions to the problems at hand brings me great joy. It has been said, that the world is drowning in data but ever starving for knowledge. Refining that data to a usable form is something of a passion and in my opinion a solid career path as well. Off work I like to do road cycling, alpine skiing, bass playing and I’m a part time farmer, too.
What are you working on? Which team?
I’m working to develop an analytics platform for omaolo.fi. It is a service for effective online self-care and with an option to get directed to the right entry point in professional healthcare when needed for the Finnish citizens. In a broader perspective I work as member of the Solita Data Science team.
What do you love about your job? How long have you worked at Solita?
I love the brevity of work and customers we have. I’m also a bit of a geek, so I greatly appreciate the possibility of keeping up with and utilizing the latest in technology. For me this is important both professionally and personally. Also the allocation of time for personal development aside customer work is a big motivation. I joined Solita March 2020, so I’m a fairly new recruit.
How did you get involved with Health related projects? What inspired you?
Most of my professional background is from health, so I was recruited to work on these topics specifically. I’m inspired by the potential of making on impact in form of better health. In Finland we have massive registers of professional and personal health data that have potential far beyond their current usage. Solita really is a hotspot for utilizing these resources.
What have you learned from working on Health projects at Solita?
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has certainly shown that the customer needs can change rapidly, and the speed and nature of the questions asked of the data evolve fast. It is very important to add flexibility to processes and infrastructure of handling, enriching and refining the data so that the service is ready for even unseen needs
What’s your most impactful experience at Solita so far?
I have been part of the Omaolo team that has collected, refined and delivered data to the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (Terveyden ja Hyvinvoinnin Laitos, THL) to be included as a part of the models for the progression of the Corona-virus pandemic. We were able to deliver the data starting within hours after the greenlight from the bodies governing the data.