Speaker: Prof. Dr. Reima Suomi

Abstract: Healthcare delivery is meeting enormous challenges all around world.  As costs and resource consumption are already at the limit of possible at most countries, scalable information technology seems to be one of the few working solutions to make healthcare delivery more efficient. The presentation goes through some of the most promising and discussed IT solutions to make healthcare delivery more efficient, including use of big data, artificial intelligence and robots. Promises of these technologies, as well as possible pitfalls and challenges are discussed.  Road ahead for IS research in this important is proposed.

Short Bio: Reima Suomi is a professor of Information Systems Science at the University of Turku, Finland, and a part-time Professor at Huazhong Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China. He is also a Docent at the University of Oulu, Finland. Suomi has had extended research periods abroad at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and the University of Münster, Germany. His main research interests focus on healthcare information systems, inter-organizational information systems, eGovernment, and various governance structures for information systems management. He has over 400 scientific publications, in addition to his active engagement in popular press. For 18 years, he has led the work on the conference series „Well-being in the Information Society (WIS)“. Reima Suomi has been studying digital government for over 30 years, with activities at local, regional, and national levels. As part of his railway enthusiasm, Professor Suomi has written scientific articles on the role of railways in social and economic development, comparing railway and internet revolutions at different phases. From 2006 to 2022, Reima Suomi was the founder and General Chair of the biannual multidisciplinary conference Well-Being in the Information Society. He served as the vice-chair of the Baltic Region Healthy Cities Association, a WHO collaboration center in Finland, from 2004 to 2020.