Kuopio Health Board blog-Paulus Carpelan
“Our will is measured by what each of us is doing on our own.”
What is it that I can do?
What can I do to take things forward? This is an important question that every Kuopio Health member must ask themselves.
It’s not the innovation ecosystem itself that gets things done; instead, we need its members’ input. Kuopio Health can bring people together and create a plan that allows us to head in the same direction. Nevertheless, our will is actually measured by what each of us is doing on our own.
We have a lot of potential. The issues important to science-based health technology that lay the foundation for success are in order: ideas and innovations emerge in research carried out at universities.
In public healthcare, we can refine these ideas into competitive products suitable to the international market. Healthcare, the university hospital and well-being services counties play a key role in all this.
As long as we have the will to work together, we have great opportunities for success.
Things must work well in practice
However, it is not enough to have things in order in principle. Everything must also work well in practice.
For example, for start-ups, time is money and there is no time to wait around. Everything boils down to having to get things done so you’ll get an opportunity to receive additional funding and then carry out new demonstrations and obtain more funding through them.
This important position provides companies with an opportunity to test, experiment with and improve their products as soon as these are created. In practice, this means cooperation with public healthcare.
I understand that healthcare is facing challenges and may struggle to incorporate additional activities into its operations. Because of this, we must think about the big picture: why should healthcare be involved in testing and helping us to create the most competitive health tech products in the world? What benefits will this bring to healthcare?
It pays to look for new innovations
At Kuopio Health, we should also think about whether there is something we haven’t even thought about yet. Even minor changes can create major impacts.
This is where the strength of the innovation ecosystem lies, as it brings together such highly different operators and perspectives. Ultimately, what really matters is that we are coming up with new innovations and creating new companies around them, which in turn translate the innovations into internationally competitive products and services.
This creates a positive loop that feeds itself. A community that facilitates and promotes development is sure to also attract new members from the international level.
Kuopio is already drawing attention
Recently, I was talking about Adamant Health’s product that analyses movement disorders in an event that presented a small group of health tech start-ups for big international corporations.
I told the audience that I was from Kuopio. The audience was amazed as I represented the third company from Kuopio of the companies present at the event. They were clearly interested in what is going on around here!
Kuopio has genuine potential for becoming the best place in the world for developing health tech products. This won’t be achieved overnight but I believe we’ll be in a completely different situation in five years’ time.
This requires collaboration and examples of companies that have successfully entered the international market. And we will also have to know how to communicate about and tell others about these successes. Kuopio Health plays a major role in this process.