OuluHealth cel­e­brates a decade of pio­neer­ing inno­va­tion in health and social care

In the era of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and health inno­va­tions emerg­ing in response to chal­lenges in the health and social sec­tor, the OuluHealth ecosys­tem remains an excel­lent exam­ple of a net­work of com­mit­ted stake­hold­ers who embrace ongo­ing changes and devote them­selves to the mis­sion of improv­ing future health. For ten years, OuluHealth has show­cased a col­lab­o­ra­tive mod­el that brings togeth­er stake­hold­ers from both the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor to sup­port the imple­men­ta­tion of bet­ter, con­nect­ed, and patient–oriented health ser­vices. Locat­ed in the vibrant city of Oulu, Fin­land, the ecosys­tem has con­tributed great­ly to build­ing the city’s rep­u­ta­tion of being one of the lead­ing health tech­nol­o­gy cen­ters in the world and home to inno­va­tions that are trans­form­ing health­care on a glob­al scale. 11 Jan­u­ary marked a sig­nif­i­cant date for OuluHealth, as it proud­ly cel­e­brat­ed its 10th anniver­sary.

Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion

The anniver­sary sem­i­nar was held in the premis­es of the Provin­cial Gov­ern­ment in Oulu. It brought togeth­er the ecosystem’s stake­hold­ers, local author­i­ties, and oth­er sup­port­ers to cel­e­brate remark­able mile­stones and reflect on the path we have walked togeth­er so far. The pro­gramme was divid­ed into two parts named ‘OuluHealth – the first 10 years’ and ‘OuluHealth – the next 10 years’, each filled with inter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tions. Some of the ecosystem’s sup­port­ers, such as Andy Blead­en, Com­mu­ni­ties Direc­tor at ECHAl­liance, Bri­an O’Connor, Chair at ECHAl­liance, and the Dutch Ambas­sador to Fin­land, Govert Jan Bijl De Vroe, extend­ed their anniver­sary greet­ings remote­ly.

“Our rela­tion­ship with Oulu goes back even before the ecosys­tem was formed. It has become an essen­tial and per­ma­nent engine for inno­va­tion in the region and we are delight­ed to have its rep­re­sen­ta­tives as impor­tant mem­bers of the ECHAl­liance Glob­al Ecosys­tem Net­work”, said O’Connor.

The anniver­sary sem­i­nar proved to be a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case the achieve­ments of the past decade, and also to set the stage for future endeav­ors.

The jour­ney of col­lab­o­ra­tion and inno­va­tion

The first part of the pro­gramme was offi­cial­ly ini­ti­at­ed by Jar­mo Hus­so rep­re­sent­ing the author­i­ties of the city of Oulu, fol­lowed by OuluHealth key play­ers’ pre­sen­ta­tions.

Noo­ra Jans­son, Direc­tor of Research Devel­op­ment and Inno­va­tion at the Oulu Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences, invit­ed the lis­ten­ers to a trip down mem­o­ry lane. She described how OuluHealth start­ed and evolved over 6 years when she worked as the ecosystem’s Net­work Direc­tor.

“In 2012, I start­ed to work for Busi­nes­sOulu, and my job was to super­vise a new project. The Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Juha Ala-Mur­su­la, told me that there were sev­er­al new ini­tia­tives ongo­ing that required sup­port’, Jans­son opened her sto­ry. “Then, there was no OuluHealth yet. We cre­at­ed the name dur­ing the fall of 2012. It was first called the Kon­tinkan­gas project. At that time, there were many phas­es of devel­op­ment, includ­ing receiv­ing fund­ing for the AVAUS project, estab­lish­ing the Cen­tre for Health and Tech­nol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, and so on”, she con­tin­ued.

Then Marit­ta Perälä-Heape, Pro­fes­sor of Prac­tice and a founder of the Cen­tre for Health and Tech­nol­o­gy, deliv­ered her speech refer­ring to the expe­ri­ence she gained rep­re­sent­ing OuluHealth dur­ing numer­ous Euro­pean Com­mis­sion events, work­shops, and dig­i­tal health con­fer­ences.

“I enjoyed work­ing with many dif­fer­ent types of stake­hold­ers and bring­ing some­thing new to their inno­va­tion process­es, bring­ing researchers clos­er to com­pa­nies, defin­ing the devel­op­ment needs from the health­care providers, and find­ing solu­tions and devel­op­ers to address them”, said Perälä-Heape.

OuluHealth’s stand­out achieve­ments worth men­tion­ing are the estab­lish­ment of OuluHealth Labs- test­ing and inno­va­tion plat­form, Oulu being list­ed as a top glob­al city for health tech in the Start­up Blink’s assess­ment, join­ing the Euro­pean Dig­i­tal Inno­va­tion Hub (EDIH), grant­i­ng to Oulu 4 stars and recog­ni­tion as the Ref­er­ence Site of the Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Part­ner­ship on Active and Healthy Age­ing, the OYS2030 pro­gramme ranked first in the Inter­na­tion­al Hos­pi­tal Federation’s IHF Awards 2023, and many oth­er. Beyond its local impact, OuluHealth has gained recog­ni­tion also on a glob­al stage. Col­lab­o­ra­tive projects with inter­na­tion­al part­ners, par­tic­i­pa­tion in con­fer­ences, and the export of inno­v­a­tive health­care solu­tions have estab­lished Oulu as a key play­er in the inter­na­tion­al health­care com­mu­ni­ty.

The ecosys­tem has also been an active part of many suc­cess sto­ries shared by Oulu-based health tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, both indus­try lead­ers and agile star­tups. There­fore, there could not be a cel­e­bra­tion with­out their involve­ment in the pro­gramme. The audi­ence lis­tened to pre­sen­ta­tions by Finnad­vance, Near-Real, Cere­nion, Nucu, and Smart PD Solu­tions, which are great exam­ples of lever­ag­ing inno­v­a­tive research and trans­form­ing it into cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies.

The ses­sion end­ed with a speech deliv­ered by Maria Vuoren­so­la rep­re­sent­ing the Oulu Inno­va­tion Alliance, fol­lowed by clos­ing words from OuluHealth’s Net­work Direc­tor, Min­na Komu.

Look­ing into the future

Dur­ing the sec­ond part of the pro­gramme, the atten­tion shift­ed from the past to the OYS­TER project and its influ­ence on the ecosys­tem in the future. It was time for OuluHealth’s main stake­hold­ers to take the stage. They shared their insights on behalf of the Well­be­ing Ser­vices Coun­ty of North Ostro­both­nia, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, the Tech­ni­cal Research Cen­tre of Fin­land, and the Oulu Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences. The speak­ers agreed that the 10th-anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion was a per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to come togeth­er and look back on how much we have achieved through coop­er­a­tion, but the ecosystem’s focus remains on the future. OuluHealth will make sure that the col­lab­o­ra­tive spir­it of its stake­hold­ers will con­tin­ue to pow­er new busi­ness mod­els, inno­v­a­tive projects, cross-cul­tur­al part­ner­ships, and ground­break­ing health solu­tions.

‘’For the first 10 years, we focused on build­ing an ecosys­tem, engag­ing stake­hold­ers, cre­at­ing struc­tures and com­mon modes of oper­a­tion. In the next 10 years, we will focus on scal­ing our oper­a­tions and turn­ing them into even more impres­sive. The goal is to work togeth­er towards the big goal, which is of OYS­TER – the RDI cen­ter for dig­i­tal health. OYS­TER will be built to com­plete the future hos­pi­tal project, OYS2030. Bring­ing this inno­v­a­tive RDI cen­ter to Oulu is a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment for North­ern Fin­land and for the whole coun­try, as well as an inter­na­tion­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant enti­ty’’, con­clud­ed Min­na Komu.

With a strong track record of suc­cess, we are con­fi­dent that OuluHealth is well-posi­tioned to lead the way to the next gen­er­a­tion of health­care, a mis­sion in which all stake­hold­ers have embarked with us. The goal is to remain a shin­ing exam­ple of what can be achieved when diverse stake­hold­ers come togeth­er with com­mit­ment and a shared vision. As the ecosys­tem con­tin­ues to evolve, it will serve as an inspi­ra­tion for regions seek­ing to trans­form their health­care land­scapes. OuluHealth’s jour­ney demon­strates that by fos­ter­ing a for­ward-think­ing envi­ron­ment, we can build a health­i­er and more resilient future for all.

Text and image: Joan­na Sep­pä­nen, Health and Life Sci­ence, Busi­nes­sOulu