Kuopio Health Board blog: Petri Laine
“I hope that I’ll be able to help the members of the cooperative and open doors for them to the world of international investors.”
An investor interested in profits and humanist values
I’m an optimist. I believe that 2030 will probably be better than 2022. Even if the economy is still struggling in the early part of the year, we’ll be heading towards better times in the 3rd and 4th quarters. Six months ago, investors were extremely cautious, but the market seems to have perked up already. I believe that this situation has had and will continue to have an effect on those Kuopio Health members that are still looking to attract external funding for the development of their activities. It also remains to be seen whether big corporations will put development projects temporarily on hold. This may also affect the operations of startups as they are often involved in such projects.
Connections with international investors
My contribution to the Kuopio Health Board is an investors’ viewpoint – how they perceive the health sector and the growth potential it has. I hope that I’ll be able to help the members of the cooperative and open doors for them to the world of international investors. For example, I’ve served as a link between a private hospital in Istanbul and local health tech companies. The hospital is currently seeking various healthcare innovations from the Nordics and they are contacting VC investors as their target companies are developing the latest innovations.
Profits and humanist values show impacts
From the investors’ perspective, the returns on investments are a clear indicator of impacts. But we’re also genuinely interested in those effects of innovations that improve people’s quality of life and bring health-economic impacts. After all, we all know that it makes more sense to prevent than treat. It is nonetheless tricky to find those willing to pay for prevention. Indeed, I’d like to see and contribute to the development of preventive models backed up by a funding model that works. It is also key that we’ll be able to genuinely affect the lives of people and families. In addition to profits measured in euros, humanist values are important.
More members and higher activity
As someone who’s been involved in the Kuopio Health activities for a few years, I’m more and more convinced that we’re dealing with the right issues here. Now, we must promote impacts by continuing to build our critical mass. We still need more members and must become increasingly active. In practice, this means organising various events, which will hopefully enable us to meet people in person. By giving people an opportunity to meet one another, we’re giving room for chance encounters. On the other hand, as our members reach outside Kuopio’s borders, we can think about how and where to organise these meetings. We also still need to attract big corporations to our activities. Their involvement will also help newer companies succeed as smaller businesses get to participate in the projects of larger enterprises. The innovation ecosystem’s task is to share information about such cooperation opportunities, as we still need to raise more awareness.