OBJECTIVES: National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health in Finland (Valvira) lists regulatorily compliant secure processing environments (SPE) to a public database (TOINI). Stakeholders use the database for many tasks, such as for secondary-use data permits, supervision, and SPE validity checks. Personal, social, and health care data can only be analysed in one of the listed SPE for the purposes specified in the Act on the Secondary Use of Health and Social Data: scientific research, the compilation of statistics, authority tasks of planning and investigation, and teaching material preparation. Here, we compare the listed SPEs.

METHODS: Currently certified SPEs were identified from the TOINI-database. In addition, publicly available information in websites of SPEs at the end of June 2022 was used for the comparison. Comparison included website availability, permitted use, technology and data location, ownership, and additional features on top of extract-transfer-load (ETL) and analysis processes.

RESULTS: The SPEs in approval order include HUS Acamedic by Helsinki University Hospital, T3 by Istekki, SPESiOR by ESiOR Oy, FinnGen Sandbox by FinnGen project, Kapseli by Findata, Fiona by Statistics Finland, SD Desktop by CSC, and System by Aalto. Of the eight SPEs, half (SPESiOR, Kapseli, Fiona, SD Desktop) seem to have specific websites. The permitted use is limited to the secondary use in half of the SPEs, but some include genetic data (FinnGen Sandbox) or sensitive data use in general (SPESiOR, SD Desktop, System by Aalto). Half seem to use cloud technology and two use private clouds located in Finland (SPESiOR, SD Desktop). Based on the websites, one SPE (SPESiOR) includes integrated data collection tool for chart reviews, structuring, and augmentation, interfaces, and storage, is customizable, and owned by a private company. Other SPEs are owned by authorities, hospitals, or universities.

CONCLUSIONS: SPEs have differences, encouraging novelty and they seem to be aimed for different purposes.