Frequently asked questions

Oy Apotti Ab is a limited company registered in 2015. The reason for founding the company was the need to build a joint Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for the Uusimaa region. This system would be the first in the world to combine primary health care, specialised medical care and social care services into a single information system, thereby harmonising social care and health care services and modes of operation. Oy Apotti Ab is owned by HUS Helsinki University Hospital, the City of Helsinki and the wellbeing services counties of Uusimaa (Vantaa and Kerava, West, East and Central Uusimaa).

The object of the company’s operation is to provide for its owners, at cost price, services related to the use, development and maintenance of the electronic client and patient record and ERP system. The strategic goal is to provide solutions to social and health care sector challenges for the customer organisations. Another purpose is also to foster the formation of an Apotti ecosystem (read more below), which enables customer organisations to incorporate new innovations to the system.

The Apotti program began in 2012, and the program phase ended in the autumn of 2022 after the last imaging deployment. The final program report was approved by the Apotti steering group on 24th November 2023. The approval of the final report officially ended the program phase. The purpose of the report was to make sure that all program content had been delivered.

Read more about the final report here. (In Finnish)

Find out more about the Oy Apotti Ab management structure here.
Find out more about the Apotti values here.

The Apotti ecosystem offers Finnish health and welfare technology companies a great opportunity to grow internationally. The ecosystem provides a unique opportunity to innovate as well as test and develop social and health care software products and to reach vast numbers of clients, as well as social care and health care providers, both in Finland and abroad. When an ecosystem partner gets a client reference from Apotti, it is a strong indicator of Epic integration and therefore a significant aid for entering the global market.

The Apotti system can be complemented and expanded with innovative applications developed by health and welfare technology companies. The most important technical tool for practising the integration of these applications is the Apotti Sandbox environment (Apotti Online Sandbox) which is, in essence, the Apotti system without real patient/client data. The Sandbox environment has been in use since spring 2023, and the ecosystem partners can test their services using so-called synthetic data, which is artificial Finnish patient and client data.

Read more about the Apotti ecosystem here.

When Oy Apotti Ab began the system acquisition process, an extended procurement strategy was drafted, in which the requirements of the system solution were defined. The procurement was compliant with the public procurement procedure for procurements that surpass the EU threshold values. The US-based Epic Systems Corporation most closely fulfilled the set criteria which emphasised usability, flexibility, openness and adaptability. Epic Systems hired Accenture to work as a subcontractor for the Apotti program, and Accenture supported Epic and Apotti in implementation of the system.

The Epic system already had a great deal of content that could be utilised and adapted in the development of the Apotti system. In addition to utilising data to make internal comparisons, international benchmarking is now possible, thanks to Epic. Apotti is a modular system consisting of different functional modules built on top of the core system. Apotti has been and will be able to acquire necessary modules from Epic Systems and to configure or build modules using the Epic platform. Apotti can complement the system with additional applications through an open interface and build new functionalities around the ecosystem core.

The Epic system is currently used in 550 customer organisations around the world. In Europe an Epic based system is used in Denmark, Norway, Holland, Switzerland, Great Britain and Ireland.

The Apotti system is an electronic client and patient record provided by Oy Apotti Ab to its clients. The Apotti system is the first in the world to combine primary health care, specialised medical care and social care services into a single information system, thereby harmonising social care and health care services and modes of operation. Apotti is used in the HUS Helsinki University Hospital area, in the city of Helsinki and in the wellbeing services county of Vantaa and Kerava.

The Apotti system enables smooth transfer of data between service units. With the Apotti system, social and health care providers have access to real-time client and patient data (to the extent stipulated in legislation) while they attend to clients and patients, regardless of which care or service unit documented the data. The Apotti system affects the lives of 1.7 million Uusimaa residents. 47 000 social and health care providers use the system, which is approx. 77% of all social and health care providers in the region.

More than 5000 social care and health care professionals, ICT experts, law professionals, usability and other experts have participated in developing the Apotti system over the years. Our partners include the Aalto University, the University of Tampere, the Finnish Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (FAIDD), VTT (Technical Research Centre of Finland), the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra and several social and health care initiatives in Europe and other parts of the world. Availability and reliability of information and data have been central factors in the procurement process and during all the stages of planning the use and continued development of the system.

The digital client portal Maisa and the Maisa mobile application serve citizens who use social and health care services. Maisa has already over 1.1 million users. With Maisa, they can communicate with social and health care professionals, book appointments and view their own patient and client information. Guardians can act on behalf of minors in Maisa, and adults can authorise someone else to act on their behalf.

Attending meetings with social and health care professionals remotely from your own couch is possible. Remote appointments make services more accessible and ease the workload of social and health care professionals. For instance, remote appointment pilots at HUS emergency departments have received good results: by mid-September 2022 emergency departments had treated 1625 patients remotely and issued 819 e-prescriptions.  (Read more in Finnish here.)

Read more about the Maisa client portal and Frequently Asked Questions here.

Apotti was first deployed in the HUS Peijas Hospital in Vantaa at the end of 2018 and several deployments have been carried out since then. In 2022 the Apotti system was in use in Helsinki, Kauniainen, Kerava and Vantaa and in the HUS University Hospital. At that point, the number of users had reached over 47 000.

For the client and patient:

Social and health care information is available in real time in different care and service events, which enforces patient safety. Furthermore, the Maisa client portal used in the region where Apotti is in use, is available for the clients and patients of social care, primary health care and (HUS) spesialised medical care. Maisa is the most versatile digital client portal in the market.

For the social and health care professional:

All data is accessible in real time in one system and available in different care and service events. The Apotti system and the mobile solutions connected to it, like the Rover mobile app available in homecare and in the inpatient wards, are constantly developing.

The system shows appointments booked by patients and history questionnaires they have filled in Maisa, thus saving time and work. Communication between clients, professionals and individuals becomes more efficient, because everything happens within the same system. Synergy benefits for professionals also emerge from the fact that the Apotti system is already used by over 77 % of social and health care professionals in the Uusimaa region.

In the wellbeing services counties and for social and health care providers:

The Apotti system enables seamless interoperability between HUS and the wellbeing services counties. A single system and the data it provides enable to organise and offer unified services of high quality.

Social and health care services can be measured, developed and managed as a whole based on data. Moreover, by using one comprehensive system the costs of overlapping systems can be avoided.

Over 47 000 social and health care professionals use the Apotti system as a daily information and ERP (enterprise resource planning) system.

In 2022 in the Apotti system, for example:

• 8 961 000 social and health care appointments were handled through the system
• 232 000 appointments were booked via the Maisa portal
• 39 725 medications were administered
• 447 000 electronic check-ins to appointments were made
• 583 000 questionnaires were completed in the Maisa portal
• 15 720 babies were born

The investment cost of the Apotti system in its current scope is 416 million euros. Investment costs include all the necessary licenses, all the development work including extensive integrations, a technical operating environment (including server rooms) with high standards of information security, user training with associated support materials and learning environments, and more. As the Apotti user amounts have gone up, also the costs have risen. The total cost of the Apotti program, including the production cost, is about 626 million euros.

The operating costs of the Apotti system – i.e. updates, continued development, maintenance, support and training – are estimated at 86 million euros per year. This corresponds to 1.2% of total annual expenditure on social care and health care. The operating cost for each Apotti end user is approximately 1700 euros (per user/year). From the perspective of an individual resident of the Uusimaa region, the monthly cost of the system is just under 4 euros/month.

Read more about the Apotti economy and financials here.
Read also the blog text of the Apotti CEO Hannu Välimäki about costs. (In Finnish)

The Apotti system uses structured documentation of data, so that the documented data enables operation tracking, reporting and predictability. Structured documentation produces continuous data about the quality, effectiveness and cost efficiency of care and services (click the link to read more in Finnish). The accumulating data serves many purposes in the long run.

Structured documentation enables data-driven management, and thereby enhances client and patient safety, improves the quality of care, helps in work organisation, and provides cost efficiency (click the links to read more in Finnish). Currently the Apotti system contains many data-driven management solutions based on structured documentation for first and middle level management, doctors, nurses and social care professionals. Solutions based on data produced by structured documentation support decision making and planning and also aid and support daily operations.

The Apotti system is continually developed in active cooperation with the customer organisations, taking into account the wishes of social and health care professionals. Already during the procurement phase a large number of social and health care professionals were involved and products were compared from different angles. And during the development phase professionals from all areas of the social and health care sector have been involved in the development of content definitions and workflows.  With the help of the Apotti/Epic international network the latest solutions, e.g. involving AI, can be implemented quickly. The system can be flexibly configured when needs and circumstances change, and already 133 different systems have been integrated into it (including the Kanta Archive, Kanta e-prescriptions and the Digital and Population Data Services Agency).

The goal of the Apotti 2.0 program, launched in 2021, has been to improve the usability and user satisfaction of the system (click the link to read more in Finnish). Over 230 usability enhancing functionalities and changes have been completed during the program (click the link to read more in Finnish). The program continued until the end of 2023. After that, usability development has continued as part of the normal Apotti system development.

Development is also done by Apotti advisors in the customer organisations. The Apotti advisor concept enables as many professionals as possible to participate in developing the system. The AA’s working at Apotti are experienced social care and health care professionals from Apotti’s customer organisations and have built an extensive network of highly skilled experts around them. Currently Apotti employs 63 Apotti advisors (shared part-time resources from their respective organisations), 4 subject matter experts (shared part-time resources from their respective organisations) and 7 experts (HUS Diagnostic Centre, on their own organisation’s work time).

The Apotti system is an important tool (information and ERP system) for social and health care providers, and personal data of both health care patients and social care clients are processed in the system. Data security and data protection is very important in ensuring the use of the system and protecting and securing the data it holds.

The production environment of the Apotti system is located in Finland. The system is designed in a way that possible equipment malfunctions and other error situations do not affect the functioning of the system. Security updates to the production environment components are implemented regularly.

The Apotti system is guarded against outside security threats best as possible, and the system is monitored 24/7 to detect all possible out of the ordinary situations.

Data security is an integral part of the Apotti system development. If a data security or data protection related deficiency is detected in the system application development, it is amended as soon as possible. All changes to the Apotti system are tested thoroughly and updates to the production environment are done in a controlled manner.

The Apotti system is subjected to several different data security testing and evaluations every year. The system’s data security is developed and the efficiency of earlier development efforts is verified based on the tests and evaluations. The Apotti system has been accredited with certificate, that fulfills the requirements set by the Client Data Act (the new Act on the Processing of Client Data in Healthcare and Social Welfare), by an information security inspection body.

Read more about cyber security, for instance, here.  (In Finnish)

Apotti has implemented built-in data protection as a default, which in practice means the whole organisation has the readiness and competence to evaluate the realization of data protection, for example, in system configuration and development already in very early stages. Competence and know-how are enforced with regular training and by highlighting current data protection topics on different forums, like info sessions for personnel and team meetings.

Data protection includes cooperation with internal and external interest groups. For this purpose, we have different regularly meeting groups: an internal data protection team, an internal data security and data protection review group, and an external data protection group which consists of people from Apotti and our client organisations.

Using the Apotti system always requires logging in with a user ID and password. Professionals using the system have individual role-based credentials, which allow them to view information relevant in their work.

Professionals are authorised to process only information of patients and clients with whom they have a care or service relationship. A justified reason for accessing patient or client information is always required. All actions performed while using the system are recorded to the session history log. Patients and clients have the right to find out who has accessed their information.

All user organisations monitor their personnels’ system use and take action if errors or misconduct are detected.