OuluHealth

The rapidly evolving digitalisation of health and wellbeing requires new knowledge and collaboration models to accelerate growth globally. Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) need to increase their business development expertise and capabilities in the field of digital health. Health care providers need to speed up their adoption of digital innovations and assess the impact of digital solutions on healthcare processes. New collaborative action models at the European level will speed up this development and knowledge building.

OuluHealth is one of the leading digital health innovation ecosystems in Europe. Members of the OuluHealth ecosystem represent the whole spectrum of health and social care, including specialised medical care, primary health and social care, health and wellbeing industry and commerce, health technology research and education, and citizens.

The main stakeholders of OuluHealth are Oulu University Hospital (OYS), University of Oulu, Oulu University of Applied Sciences, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, and BusinessOulu and the Department of Healthcare and Social Welfare of the City of Oulu. The OuluHealth ecosystem also encompasses more than 600 health and life science companies, at least 240 of which are high-tech companies (http://ouluhealth.fi/companies/ ). The ecosystem approach enables the combination of a broad range of expertise, from wireless information technologies and the life sciences to smart information and communication technology (ICT) solutions for delivering advanced, personalised, connected health service solutions. OuluHealth has close and tangible co-operation with SuperIOT, 5G test network Finland and Printocent Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH). Good example of this co-operation is for instance OYS to be the first hospital to test 5G-technology. The principal idea of OuluHealth is to facilitate open collaboration and to accelerate innovation by bringing together various partners to contribute to the needs of the healthcare sector and business growth in the modern digital era. This collaboration model promotes economic growth, capacity building and research and development and innovation (R&D&I) investments in select focus areas.

The recently established DigiHealth Knowledge Hub will connect companies to the latest knowledge, expertise and technology. The Hub is speeding up the adoption of digital innovation and building a joint national network for digital health research and innovation. The DigiHealth Knowledge Hub is integrated nationally and internationally with the health sector’s growth strategy implementation actions, RDI programmes and EU-level thematic platforms.

The OuluHealth ecosystem supports companies in developing their ideas into market-ready products and services by providing support in activities such as identifying opportunities for digitalisation, bringing together relevant stakeholders, providing testing and piloting platforms and environments, offering services for growth and internationalisation, and hands-on training.

• Opportunities for collaborative research and innovation: OuluHealth supports companies, researchers and healthcare professionals to collaborate on research and innovation. The ecosystem model facilitates innovation platforms for multi-stakeholder development projects and startups within digital health. It creates synergies with international research and innovation networks and builds up new partnerships to highlight trends and gaps in policies in the arena of person-centred digital health.
• Innovative testing and piloting environments: OuluHealth provides a world-class development and testing environment, OuluHealth Labs, for testing innovations throughout the entire service chain: hospitals and health and social centres as well as in patients’ homes. In this way, companies have a unique opportunity to develop their solutions under authentic conditions and receive valuable feedback from healthcare professionals and end-users.
• Digital integration platform: OuluHealth Labs provides an open sandbox for developers to simulate the integration of digital technologies in hospital environments and simulate the change opportunities embedded in the digital process for health providers.
• Business development: OuluHealth offers health and life science companies tailor-made business development support, which includes financing and business modelling, internationalisation, media contacts and invest-In services. The ecosystem helps to find investors and the right partners, increase visibility and reach international markets.
• Knowledge building and support (DigiHealth Knowledge Hub): OuluHealth offers access to expert services and innovation networks to explore and exploit emerging technologies (AI, deep learning, big data analytics, etc.) in the next-generation digital solutions develops new assessment methods for digital healthcare solutions. OuluHealth shares best practices in the implementation of digital technologies and developing data-intensive service solutions and personalised health and care. OuluHealth is building innovation networking opportunities regionally, nationally and in EU thematic platforms
• Matchmaking: OuluHealth organises events such as the ecosystem and demo days to support the growth and needs of the market. It understands the needs and challenges of companies, provides information about novel digital solutions for health and social care professionals, and provides new knowledge and research to support digital transformation.
• Training events: OuluHealth and the Faculty of Medicine from the University of Oulu together with the Finnish Medical Association and industry organise education and training events for students, where they can learn to efficiently use new digital systems in their future work as well as test and evaluate health IT solutions. Moreover, by participating, eHealth companies get a chance to obtain first-hand feedback from 5th-level medical students.

Innovation networks of OuluHealth

The OuluHealth ecosystem has active partnerships with researchers, business networks, and regional, national and international networks and alliances.

On the EU level, OuluHealth is a member of the European Connected Health Alliance, EU COST-Action network: European Network for the Joint Evaluation of Connected Health Technologies (ENJECT) and Digital Health Society Task Forces, which are building EU-level strategies and proposing actions (Action plan 2018) in digital health. The City of Oulu has been granted EIP-AHA reference site status. Oulu’s evidence for status as a reference site is largely based on the OuluHealth ecosystem and its OuluHealth Labs operation. OuluHealth is an active member of the Nordic reference site collaboration with EIP-AHA. Furthermore, OuluHealth has applied to host the EU mHealth Hub and the bid has passed the first evaluation stage.

By building a network of Nordic collaborators, OuluHealth aims to strengthen cooperation at both the strategic and operational levels. A good example of this is the network of Nordic Test Beds (NoTeB). Long collaboration with Nordic partners generated the Nordic Proof testing collaboration network, which OuluHealth will be a member of beginning in 2019. These active interactions with European innovation networks ensure the formation of strong strategic partnerships, as well as rapid and broad implementation of novel solutions and action models in innovation ecosystems.

On the regional level, OuluHealth has strong collaborations with Allied ICT Finland, which brings together several domain-specific DIHs, such as Super IOT, PrintoCent, Arctic Drone Labs and 5G test network Finland as well as services like Analytics+ in Finland. OuluHealth is one of the five innovation ecosystems of the Oulu Innovation Alliance (OIA), which is a regional strategic collaboration model with committed stakeholders. The collaboration model has proven to be an excellent ecosystem model for public-private-people partnership cooperation at the regional, national and international level. OIA’s four other ecosystems are Agile Commercialisation, ICT & Digitalisation, Industry 2026, and Northern City with Attractive Opportunities.

More info: www.ouluhealth.fi