Stakeholders
OuluHealth facilitates close cooperation that drives innovation, boosts the healthtech business and supports the implementation of better healthcare services.
The OuluHealth ecosystem has a unique culture of collaboration along a broad spectrum: academia and researchers, social and healthcare providers, businesses, local government and citizens. Reinforcing this spirit of collaboration, the ecosystem provides a network of committed stakeholders that strive to transform healthcare on a global scale and, as a result, improve people’s lives.
The OuluHealth ecosystem is designed to benefit all citizens by creating better healthcare services and solutions: personalised, connected, cost-efficient and agile. Bring your knowledge, networks and passion to our community and make the future healthier.
Find out how we can support you in: co-creating health innovations, business development and research.
HEALTH, LIFE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MERGE TO CREATE INNOVATION
OuluHealth supports a research and innovation culture as well as health and life science companies to create one of the largest and most innovative health technology centres. In the ecosystem’s network, you find world-class co-creators from a wide range of disciplines to guide you in bringing to life your idea for digitising and personalising health care.
The OuluHealth ecosystem is a world leader in using technologies, such as 5G/6G, IOT, AI, VR, AR and BigData, to develop health and life science innovations. Oulu’s healthtech sector sets the pace for R&D investment in Finland – and is near the top in the EU. The Oulu University Hospital is slated to be the world’s smartest hospital.
In short, the collaboration potential in Oulu for innovation in digital health attracts partners – companies, entrepreneurs, and researchers – with ambitions to lead the world into the next generation of health care.
The Oulu region is home to technologies that are used daily by nearly 3 billion people. The Health and Life Science companies develop cutting-edge innovations, offer world-class expertise and expand to international markets.
BusinessOulu is a public utility of the City of Oulu that promotes economic development, innovation, and business growth in the Oulu region.
To create a diverse business community, support the implementation of new solutions, strengthen the collaboration among local businesses and organizations, and support entrepreneurship, BusinessOulu offers a variety of business development services for companies in the region. The services vary from providing the information needed to establish a company and startup incubation, through financing assistance and investment to internationalization. The organization also connects businesses with local research institutions, universities, and other relevant stakeholders in both public and private sectors.
BusinessOulu contributes to creating new workplaces and helps job seekers find employment and develop their expertise. To achieve this goal, the organisation creates direct contacts with corporate life in order to facilitate matchmaking between job seekers and companies with vacant positions.
In addition to its core services, BusinessOulu organizes a variety of initiatives, such as networking events, workshops, seminars, training, and conferences. These extras help to create a platform for learning, collaboration, and generating innovative ideas. BusinessOulu also assists with international marketing of Oulu and facilitates the OuluHealth ecosystem’s activities.
BusinessOulu plays an important role as a hub of industries supporting the development of businesses and promoting the region as a dynamic and innovative business location on the international level.
Oulu is one of the oldest cities in Finland and the fifth largest in terms of population, which is approximately 210,000 inhabitants including about 100 nationality groups. The city successfully combines hospitality, beautiful nature, and culture with modern technology. Oulu boasts a strong reputation of a technology hub that has a special focus on the development of the information and communications (ICT) and digital health sectors. The city is home to numerous technology companies that develop innovative solutions, research centers, and universities. Oulu is especially known for supporting long-term cooperation between different sectors, open-minded people, versatile business structures, advanced technology, rich history, and beautiful surroundings.
The well-being services county of North Ostrobothia (Pohde) provides a wide range of public health, social, and rescue services for all North Ostrobothnia residents. Our aim is to offer diverse, functional, and high-quality services in a timely and equitable manner for everyone, regardless of the place of residence. Our personnel supports our residents in issues related to health, safety, and well-being. The emphasis is on basic services and early problem prevention. Pohde employs nearly 18 500 highly-skilled people, to whom we constantly provide opportunities for development.
Oulu University Hospital, one of the five university hospitals in Finland, provides high-quality healthcare services to the entire northern Finland region. This hospital utilises cutting-edge equipment in all specialised branches of medicine and employs several thousand highly trained professionals. OYS is the first hospital to test the 5G-technology. The hospital has been undergoing total modernisation as a part of the Future Hospital 2030 programme.
The University of Oulu is an international science university, which creates new knowledge, well-being and innovation for the future through multidisciplinary research and education. Close cooperation with research institutes, companies and the public sector has created an internationally significant research and innovation hub that has changed the world. The University of Oulu is widely respected for its research on new technology, people and culture in a changing living environment and as a multidisciplinary expert in Arctic issues.
Read about researchers and their research topics.
The Oulu University of Applied Sciences is a strong multidisciplinary unit that educates approximately 9000 students. The university features 460 staff members, excellent teaching facilities and learning environments, a great variety of multidisciplinary RDI projects and fields of study programmes as well as study projects. The Oulu University of Applied Sciences also provides the Oamk SimLab, a simulation environment for testing health products and services.
VTT is a visionary research, development, and innovation partner and one of the leading research organizations in Europe with over 2000 employees. In the area of health technologies, VTT offers research and development services for medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, SMEs, and healthcare organizations.
In collaboration with customers and partners, VTT develops comprehensive data-driven health solutions including new science-based service and product concepts, hardware and software design for wearable sensors and diagnostic devices, multimodal data collection, integration and analytics, and concept and device validation.
MRC Oulu is a strategic research organization of the Wellbeing services county of North Ostrobothnia and the University of Oulu. MRC Oulu offers a multidisciplinary research environment for clinical, translational and healthcare socioeconomic research. MRC Oulu focuses its clinical research on diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of nationally important chronic diseases. Currently, MRC Oulu consists of approximately 80 research groups from the University of Oulu, Oulu University Hospital, and Northern Finland collaborative area. The clinical Research Center (CRC), which is a part of MRC Oulu infrastructure, is a supportive and efficient laboratory environment for researchers of MRC Oulu. MRC Oulu co-operates locally, nationally, and internationally with several universities, research institutes, as well as enterprises.
Biocenter Oulu (BCO) is a focus institute at the University of Oulu that supports high-quality research and coordinates multidisciplinary research activities on the University´s “Life-long health” strategic focus area. BCO provides academic and industrial customers with open access to research infrastructure and services in life sciences with state-of-the-art technologies and trained experts. BCO research services are part of the national Biocenter Finland research infrastructure network.
The Biobank Borealis was established by the Northern Ostrobothnia Hospital District, the University of Oulu, NordLab, the hospital/healthcare districts of Lapland, Länsi-Pohja, Central Ostrobothnia and Kainuu. The Biobank Borealis offers various sample types and research services:
- The pathology archives (Oulu University Hospital and four central hospitals) include 1.8M tissue and cell samples
- A rapidly growing collection of blood samples (serum, plasma, DNA)
- The Finnish Maternity Cohort (FMC) collection contains over 2M serum samples, collected from mothers during their pregnancies
- Infrastructure and tools related to the storage and management of samples
- Opportunities for R&D collaboration, e.g. tailored sample collections
- Digitalisation of tissue samples, and planning and production of tissue microarray (TMA) blocks
- Processing and analysis of samples
How to obtain samples, services and data from Biobank Borealis?
A scientific committee will evaluate all sample and data requests. Contact Biobank Borealis with a preliminary plan to find out whether we have suitable material. Further instruction on how to make a Biobank Request.
Fingenious – Your Digital Gateway to Finnish Biobanks and Biomedical Research.
Northern Finland Birth Cohorts NFBC1966 and NFBC1986 are prospective, longitudinal data collections with more than 20 000 cohort members who have been studied on a regular basis since the antenatal period using health care records, questionnaires, and clinical examinations. Together with two cohorts of elderly individuals, Oulu1935 and Oulu1945, they form the Northern Finland Birth Cohorts – Research program for health and well-being.
Arctic Biobank – University of Oulu was established in 2020 to host the biological sample collections of these large population-based studies. Several types of biological samples are available for research such as blood, cells, fecal, urine, and saliva. Altogether sample collection contains c. 400 000 samples from 16 000 cohort members.
More about Northern Finland Birth Cohorts’ data and sample collections, and how to request: https://www.oulu.fi/en/university/faculties-and-units/faculty-medicine/northern-finland-birth-cohorts-and-arctic-biobank.