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Provides information about the extent of cytopathology program in Finland. Prime movers of clinical cytology in the country; Outcome of the cervical cancer mass screening program; Involvement of midwives in smear taking activities.

Travel times between different locations form the basis for most contemporary measures of spatial accessibility. Travel times allow to estimate the potential for interaction between people and places, and is therefore a vital measure for understanding the functioning, sustainability, and equity of cities. Here, we provide an open travel time matrix dataset that describes travel times between the centroids of all cells in a grid (N = 13,132) covering the metropolitan area of Helsinki, Finland. The travel times recorded in the dataset follow a door-to-door approach that provides comparable travel times for walking, cycling, public transport and car journeys, including all legs of each trip by each mode, such as the walk to a bus stop, or the search for a parking spot. We used the r5py Python package, that we developed specifically for this computation. The data are sensitive to diurnal variations and to variations between people (e.g. slow and fast walking speed). We validated the data against the Google Directions API and present use cases from a planning practice. The five key principles that guided the data set design and production - comparability, simplicity, reproducibility, transferability, and sensitivity to temporal and interpersonal variations - ensure that urban and transport planners, business and researchers alike can use the data in a wide range of applications., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Comparable data on spatial accessibility by different travel modes are frequently needed to understand how city regions function. Here, we present a spatial dataset called the Helsinki Region Travel Time Matrix that has been calculated for 2013, 2015 and 2018. This longitudinal dataset contains travel time and distance information between all 250 metres statistical grid cell centroids in the Capital Region of Helsinki, Finland. The dataset is multimodal and multitemporal by nature: all typical transport modes (walking, cycling, public transport, and private car) are included and calculated separately for the morning rush hour and midday for an average working day. We followed a so-called door-to-door principle, making the information between travel modes comparable. The analyses were based primarily on open data sources, and all the tools that were used to produce the data are openly available. The matrices form a time-series that can reveal the accessibility conditions within the city and allow comparisons of the changes in accessibility in the region, which support spatial planning and decision-making.

Introduction: A specialized inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) nurse is considered a valuable and cost-effective member of a multidisciplinary team, not all clinics responsible for IBD care employ such nurses. We evaluated IBD nurse resources, quality of care and cost effects on IBD patients care in a nationwide study in Finland., Methods: A healthcare professional electronic survey was conducted in order to assess the impact of an IBD nurse on the quality of care. To study the cost effects, we obtained nationwide comprehensive data covering years between 2008 and 2016 from major administrative healthcare districts of Finland. Patients with a diagnosis of IBD (ICD-code K50 or K51) were identified from the data and their personal contacts and hospitalization were analyzed. The results were compared between healthcare districts with an IBD nurse and healthcare districts without an IBD nurse., Results: Forty-nine physicians and 88 nurses responded to the survey. Of the physicians, 92% reported that an established IBD nurse had released physician's resources. The most important IBD nurse contributions listed were patient support and follow-up (79-81% of the respondents). Healthcare district, which had an established IBD nurse, produced more patient contacts. A larger proportion of the contacts was managed by the IBD nurse. Clinics with an IBD nurse reported less patient hospitalization (4-9% vs 11-19%, p < .001). Estimated annual cost savings while employing an IBD nurse may be significant., Conclusion: The introduction of an IBD nurse led to better quality of care and potentially significant cost savings by reducing hospitalization rates and reallocating physician's time resources.

The boreal region is facing intensifying resource extraction pressure, but the lack of comprehensive biodiversity data makes operative forest conservation planning difficult. Many countries have implemented forest inventory schemes and are making extensive and up-to-date forest databases increasingly available. Some of the more detailed inventory databases, however, remain proprietary and unavailable for conservation planning. Here, we investigate how well different open and proprietary forest inventory data sets suit the purpose of conservation prioritization in Finland. We also explore how much priorities are affected by using the less accurate but open data. First, we construct a set of indices for forest conservation value based on quantitative information commonly found in forest inventories. These include the maturity of the trees, tree species composition, and site fertility. Secondly, using these data and accounting for connectivity between forest types, we investigate the patterns in conservation priority. For prioritization, we use Zonation, a method and software for spatial conservation prioritization. We then validate the prioritizations by comparing them to known areas of high conservation value. We show that the overall priority patterns are relatively consistent across different data sources and analysis options. However, the coarse data cannot be used to accurately identify the high-priority areas as it misses much of the fine-scale variation in forest structures. We conclude that, while inventory data collected for forestry purposes may be useful for forest conservation purposes, it needs to be detailed enough to be able to account for more fine-scaled features of high conservation value. These results underline the importance of making detailed inventory data publicly available. Finally, we discuss how the prioritization methodology we used could be integrated into operative forest management, especially in countries in the boreal zone.

On September 29, 2008 in Kauhajoki, a student killed ten persons and committed suicide. Many people in the region were subjected to an extensive sensation of threat and experienced mental effects of the tragedy. Aftercare of the tragedy has been coordinated by the Kauhajoki project. The project has aimed at ensuring that persons and communities traumatized by the event in their life and functioning will receive the required psychosocial support and appropriate treatment. The goal is to restore the mental balance and to maintain the ability to work and function.

Aim: To characterise the variation in performance indicators of the Finnish cervical screening programme by screening laboratory and to assess whether the performance affects cervical cancer incidence., Methods: Cervical cancer screening data from 1999 to 2003 from six well-established laboratories were used to analyse rates for follow-up recommendations, referrals and histologically confirmed dysplastic lesions. Laboratory-specific cervical cancer incidences for 1954-2003 were assessed using the cancer registry files., Results: Differences in follow-up recommendations were up to 3.1-fold and 2.2-fold in referrals; differences in the rates for CIN1, CIN2 and CIN3+ were up to 4.5-, 4.7-, and 1.5-fold, respectively. Pre-screening incidence rates for cervical cancer varied 1.5-fold by laboratory, with no major differences in the incidence trends since the onset of screening., Conclusion: The performance of a cervical screening programme differs by screening laboratory but does not materially affect the overall programme effectiveness. This leads to variation in cost-effectiveness and probably in avoidable adverse effects. In cervical cancer screening studies, the outcome should be selected as closely as possible to the true measure of programme effectiveness, prevented invasive cervical cancers and subsequent deaths.

Our objective was to evaluate automation-assisted screening, in comparison to the conventional method, in a routine population-based cervical cancer-screening programme. Our study is based on an individually randomised design involving approximately 160,000 invitees and 110,000 attendees every year. From 1999 to 2001, 471,297 women were invited to attend and 330,445 smears were screened (attendance rate 70.1%), of which 220,254 were tested conventionally and 110,191 were tested using the automation-assisted method. Cytologic Papanicolaou group II findings were reported slightly more often (RR = 1.04) in the automation-assisted method than in the conventional screening arm. There were 1,291 cases of histologically confirmed dysplasia or carcinoma (0.4% of the screened), one-third of which were severe dysplasia or a more severe finding (CIN3+). The detection rates of histologically verified findings were similar between the 2 screening arms. In Finland, the screening programme has been effective. As the detection rates, particularly of CIN3+, were similar between the screening arms, we will continue the automation-assisted method in the routine screening programme. Further follow-up for interval cancer incidence is required, however, to measure if the effect of screening is the same between the arms. A similar evaluation design is feasible to any other major or competing modification of the screening test or other element in the programme., (Copyright 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc)