Presenting Kuopio Health members: VTT provides technology to make health monitoring and guiding treatment pathways easier
“Together with other Kuopio Health members, we have set our aim high to make Kuopio Finland’s leading development platform for technological solutions targeted at healthcare professionals.”
VTT provides technology to make health monitoring and guiding treatment pathways easier
– Needs emerge from healthcare professionals, and VTT’s aim is to translate technology into solutions, Research Professor Markus Forsberg describes the role that VTT plays in developing health technology.
VTT’s research, development and innovation activities have been divided into three business areas: carbon-neutral solutions, future products and materials, and digital technologies. The organisation employs over 2,000 people around Finland.
VTT operates in six localities. Within the business areas, the operations have been organised into research areas and teams. The research in health technology has been focused on one research area and three teams whose work revolves around this. Most of the around dozen VTT employees in Kuopio work in health tech.
– The research activities in Kuopio are focused on health data analytics and health monitoring solutions. We develop solutions that enable assessing individuals’ risk for developing an illness based on extensive health data. Profiling patients also facilitates finding individual treatment paths and correct therapies for patients, Forsberg notes.
VTT’s aim is to promote a more anticipatory and preventive approach in healthcare through technology and enhance the resource efficiency of health care. For example, if a patient’s condition was constantly monitored using various digital technologies, we could fare better at assessing the impacts of the chosen treatment and guide the patient’s treatment path. Today, the control appointments for many chronic diseases follow a certain, pre-determined schedule even if some patient’s condition would actually require taking measures earlier.
Information about the needs of professionals
VTT became a member of Kuopio Health in spring 2021. One of its goals is to create close contacts with healthcare professionals and to investigate which challenges need to be solved.
– The Kuopio Health open innovation ecosystem seems well-functioning and promising, and it was easy for us to join their forces, Markus Forsberg says.
Based on his estimate, tools based on extensive health data that aim to support decision-making among professionals and a process leading from research to business are among the competencies found at VTT that can benefit other members of the ecosystem.
VTT is strongly linked to the international market, and Forsberg believes that the members of the innovation ecosystem can also reap benefits from these networks.
Aims are set high
Markus Forsberg has a clear view of which benefits the Kuopio Health open innovation ecosystem could bring to VTT.
– We are seeking an extremely close collaboration network for the utilisation of extensive health data, monitoring of patient’s individual care paths, and the clinical validation of new solutions. We wish for a highly agile and flexible ecosystem, he describes.
Forsberg believes that an open innovation ecosystem with active members can go far.
-Together with other Kuopio Health members, we have set our aim high to make Kuopio Finland’s leading development platform for technological solutions targeted at healthcare professionals.
According to Forsberg, the data lake in North Savo and the agile and determined cooperation network built around it create a great setting for this purpose.