Why lessons from the Nordics and cities like Oulu mat­ter as Europe mod­ernises health­care IT?

Many Euro­pean hos­pi­tal infor­ma­tion sys­tems are approach­ing the end of their life­cy­cle, moti­vat­ing health­care author­i­ties to con­sid­er alter­na­tives to tra­di­tion­al large-scale sys­tem replace­ments. This trans­for­ma­tion is already well under­way in the Nordic coun­tries, with Fin­land play­ing a sig­nif­i­cant role in shap­ing the direc­tion. A sig­nif­i­cant part of Tieto Caretech’s research and devel­op­ment takes place in Oulu, a city with a long‑standing tech­nol­o­gy her­itage and deep exper­tise in build­ing resilient dig­i­tal solu­tions.

Over decades of devel­op­ing elec­tron­ic health records and evolv­ing our plat­forms, Tieto Caretech has grad­u­al­ly devel­oped its Life­care prod­uct port­fo­lio around an open data archi­tec­ture that enables inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and long‑term flex­i­bil­i­ty, estab­lish­ing the com­pa­ny as a trust­ed leader in con­nect­ed health­care solu­tions. Life­care helps care orga­ni­za­tions man­age the full care val­ue chain, from dai­ly clin­i­cal oper­a­tions to data-dri­ven man­age­ment and ana­lyt­ics. It sup­ports the every­day care of more than ten mil­lion cit­i­zens across the Nordic region. Built on open stan­dards, mod­u­lar archi­tec­ture, and reg­u­la­to­ry readi­ness, Life­care is future‑proof by design. It adapts as health­care evolves, inte­grates seam­less­ly into diverse envi­ron­ments, and grows with organ­i­sa­tions as new needs, tech­nolo­gies, and reg­u­la­tions emerge. 

Nordic capa­bil­i­ty at the core  

A sig­nif­i­cant part of Tieto Caretech’s research and devel­op­ment takes place in Oulu, Fin­land, a city with a long tech­nol­o­gy her­itage. The region’s engi­neer­ing ecosys­tem orig­i­nal­ly grew around Nokia and has since evolved into one of North­ern Europe’s strongest soft­ware devel­op­ment hubs. That exper­tise con­tin­ues to sup­port the devel­op­ment of the Life­care port­fo­lio and the broad­er ambi­tion of build­ing open and scal­able health­care plat­forms. The com­pa­ny’s objec­tive is to help health­care orga­ni­za­tions build dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments that can evolve over time. Instead of replac­ing entire sys­tems at once, hos­pi­tals can intro­duce improve­ments grad­u­al­ly while main­tain­ing con­ti­nu­ity in clin­i­cal oper­a­tions and safe­guard­ing exist­ing data. 

In this type of ecosys­tem archi­tec­ture, dif­fer­ent ven­dors and appli­ca­tions can coex­ist on top of a shared data foun­da­tion. Health­care orga­ni­za­tions can adopt new mod­ules, ana­lyt­ics capa­bil­i­ties or dig­i­tal ser­vices when they are need­ed, rather than being tied to a sin­gle sup­pli­er roadmap. Free­dom of choice is a cen­tral prin­ci­ple. 

Tieto Caretech’s approach is now attract­ing inter­est from major health­care trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives across Europe, such as Spain and Switzer­land. As many Euro­pean health­care sys­tems pre­pare for major dig­i­tal renewals, the Nordic expe­ri­ence offers valu­able per­spec­tives. 

The path for­ward will not be iden­ti­cal for every coun­try. Health­care sys­tems dif­fer in struc­ture, gov­er­nance and fund­ing. But the Nordic jour­ney illus­trates how open, mod­u­lar archi­tec­tures can sup­port both every­day clin­i­cal work and long-term health­care trans­for­ma­tion. 

Read more: https://www.tietoevry.com/en/blog/2026/03/why-europe-is-looking-to-the-nordics/

Con­tact per­son

Teemu Vähäkainu

Head of data-dri­ven care, Tieto Caretech

Source (text and image): Tieto Caretech