Data Scientist Jani Miettinen has worked in the coordinating unit of the Neurocenter Finland, University of Eastern Finland, since 2019 and currently he works part-time on projects related to data availability. In addition, he is currently involved in the international Sleep Revolution research project, which explores, for example, the cost effects of sleep apnoea by utilizing international open data sources. The University of Eastern Finland’s project is lead by Reijo Sund, Professor of Register Studies, from the Institute of Clinical Medicine. 

“I am interested in open-source development, data visualization and automation,” describes Jani. “Open source data science enables the transparency and reproducibility of research and the further development and refinement of ideas.”   

“In a collaborative project of the Neurocenter Finland with the University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio University Hospital and Roche Ltd, I made the Alzheimer Patient Timeline Explorer application to visually examine hospital events in Alzheimer patients before and after diagnosis. The data itself is synthesized, but it describes a real-world phenomenon,” describes Jani.  

“Quite often in  brain health related research, national registry data sets are used, and large data sets are analyzed in data pool environments,” explains Jani. Jani has been involved in implementing the Regstudies R Package, a data processing tool that facilitates register research, which includes functions that facilitate the editing and use of registry data in general. “The tool can be used, for example, to classify ICD disease codes when the spectrum of disease codes is wide, as is the case in dementia, for example,” explains Jani. In addition to the Neurocenter Finland and the University of Eastern Finland, the Ai-Hub project of Northern Savo participated in the development of the tool. 

Sleep Revolution project: https://research.janimiettinen.fi/material/sleep22/      

Alzheimer Patient Timeline Explorer and Regstudies R Package: https://neurocenterfinland.fi/en/promotion-of-data-accessibility-2/ 

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Kuopio Brain & Mind is part of a nation-wide Neurocenter Finland researcher network. For more information, please visit www.neurocenterfinland.fi