How the Finnish wellbeing services county of Kanta-Häme built a unified data foundation for smarter care
With Lifecare Data Platform, Kanta-Häme turned fragmented systems into a single source of truth - fuelling data-driven management and improved financial control.
Head of Data & AI, Tietoevry Care
The challenge
When the wellbeing services county of Kanta-Häme in southern Finland was established in 2023, it brought together 15 former organizations and 11 municipalities - each with its own IT systems, data warehouses, and reporting tools.
In total, over 700 different information systems were in use. This fragmentation made it nearly impossible to analyse data across healthcare and social care services. Financial, operational, and patient-care insights were siloed, requiring manual data collection and Excel-based reporting.
The lack of centralized control also meant high costs and limited visibility. “We had two separate data warehouses controlled by third parties. Together they cost far more than a single integrated data lake,” recalls Chief Data Officer Katja Antikainen.
At the same time, the new county faced growing expectations from the Finnish government for transparent reporting, accurate diagnosis data, and outcome-based financing. To meet these demands, Kanta-Häme needed a secure, scalable data platform that could unify all information sources and support evidence-based management.
The solution
Kanta-Häme selected Tietoevry Care’s Lifecare Data Platform, built on open standards and cloud native architecture, to consolidate all critical data assets into one controlled environment.
Implementation and integration
The data platform was deployed in 2023. Within the first year, around 30 of the most critical and high-priority source systems - including the electronic health record (EHR), social care systems, HR, and finance - were connected. The number of total IT systems has since been reduced from 700 to around 500, with a target of 300–400 by 2026.
Antikainen’s Knowledge Management Team of seven now manages the entire data infrastructure and reporting for the county’s 7,000 employees. “Previously 50 to 70 people produced reports in different units. Now seven people do the same for the entire organization,” she says.
All data is visualized in Microsoft Power BI, accessible to every employee through a single portal. Hundreds of active users - from senior management to front-line clinicians - now base decisions on shared up-to-date dashboards.
About the customer
Organization: The wellbeing services county of Kanta-Häme.
Population covered: ~170,000 inhabitants
Annual budget: €900 million
Employees: ~7,000
Scope: All healthcare and social care services across 11 municipalities
Unified data foundation
Kanta-Häme replaced multiple data warehouses with one unified data lake, reducing cost and complexity while enabling consistent reporting across health and social care.
Efficiency and automation
Manual Excel reporting was replaced by automated Power BI dashboards, cutting workload and giving all staff instant access to up-to-date data.
Financial transparency
Validated diagnosis data sent from the platform ensures accurate national funding while giving Kanta-Häme full visibility and control.
Tietoevry Care’s Lifecare Data Platform gives us visibility, ownership, and possibilities. We can use the same data for management, operations, research, and national reporting. It has truly changed how we work.
Expanded outcomes and impact
Data-driven management culture
Perhaps the most important change has been cultural. “We have moved from having 50–70 people creating fragmented reports to seven processing experts and hundreds of data users,” says Antikainen.
Management teams now use dashboards in every monthly meeting, discussing trends, comparing units, and identifying improvement areas. The trust in data is growing steadily as recording quality improves.
To accelerate adoption, the data team runs regular training sessions and ‘data clinics’ that help managers interpret reports and embed data-driven decision-making.
Quantified gains
- Support in system reduction: 700 → 500 (-29%), target ≈ 350
- Reporting staff: ~70 → 7 (-90%)
- Users of analytics portal: hundreds vs < 70 before
- Automated data flows: from >10 manual spreadsheets to live BI dashboards
Operational efficiency
Routine reporting in areas such as elderly care - once requiring 10–20 people to compile Excel files - is now fully automated. Financial, HR, and clinical activity data refresh nightly.
Clinicians can drill down to their own patient data and activity metrics, while leadership gains cross-organizational visibility on performance, resource use, and outcomes.
Social-care transformation
The biggest behavioural shift has occurred in social care services, where data was previously absent from decision-making. “They used to rely on gut feeling. Now they have dashboards showing case volumes, durations, and outcomes,” Antikainen explains.
They used to rely on gut feeling. Now they have dashboards showing case volumes, durations, and outcomes.
One major improvement concern child-protection services, where open cases were not closed properly, leading to inflated statistics. New data quality reports revealed this issue, enabling corrective actions and more accurate follow-up.
Improved service planning
The data platform supports evidence-based restructuring of local care services. When evaluating which primary care stations to maintain, leaders used platform data on patient volumes, usage patterns across municipalities, and travel distances - making service optimization decisions backed by facts, not assumptions.
National data reporting and control
Previously, diagnosis data was sent directly from patient systems to national authorities - outside Kanta-Häme’s visibility. Soon, these transmissions will go through Lifecare Data Platform, ensuring the county can review, validate, and correct information before submission.
Support for innovation and analytics
The unified data foundation now enables advanced initiatives such as:
- Process mining to visualize and optimize patient- and customer journeys.
- Predictive analytics and AI pilots based on unified, high-quality data.
- Outcome tracking linking service use with quality-of-life improvements.
In pilot projects, Kanta-Häme uses Microsoft Process Mining together with Tietoevry experts to analyse care pathways - initially for depression and urgent child-protection cases - helping identify early-intervention opportunities, shorten the time to accurate diagnosis, and prevent critical situations from escalating.
Future plans
Scaling across new use cases will be supported by Tietoevry Care’s ongoing partnership and the county’s strong internal competence. “Keeping the architecture simple has helped us a lot. We use Power BI directly on top of the data lake—no unnecessary layers,” says Antikainen.
Conclusion
In just two years, the wellbeing services county of Kanta-Häme in Finland has built a unified, trusted, and future-proof data foundation that empowers managers, clinicians, and social care professionals alike.
What began as a technical consolidation has evolved into a cultural shift toward data-driven management - a model other Nordic regions now look to replicate.
