Insights

Spinverse health tech and funding experts have been supporting Helsinki University Hospital (HUS), the largest academic medical centre in Europe, in some of their publicly funded research projects and activities related to EU funding applications. We discussed with Suzan Ikävalko, Senior Research and Innovation Manager at HUS, on the importance of EU funding as means to boost innovative research projects and collaboration with other parties.

Spinverse is one of the nine partners in the STARDUST project, launched in 2017, to create a miniaturised neurosurgical implant leading to a proof-of-concept for a new treatment approach for Parkinson’s disease. The four-year project has now progressed to its final year, coming a few steps closer to introduce novel ways to treat a wide variety of diseases.

Heli Teerenhovi joined Spinverse as Senior Manager less than two months ago and has already familiarised herself with some of Spinverse’s health technology projects and the opportunities brought by EU funding to innovative technologies. We discussed with Heli about the future of health technologies and how the new solutions will help provide patients and their care personnel with a more personalised and effective care.

The European Commission recently funded AICCELERATE, a multiparty project aiming to develop AI solutions to improve patient care and hospital processes. The goal of the “AI ACCELERATOR – a Smart Hospital Care Pathway Engine” project is to demonstrate the scalability of the AI solutions for different types of healthcare use cases. The project consortium led by Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) consists of 16 partners from eight European countries.

The CleverHealth Network ecosystem is buzzing with activity as the ongoing six co-development projects aim to develop new treatments and solutions to address clearly defined clinical challenges. The product and service innovations under development will use extensive and high-quality health care data of the Helsinki University Hospital (HUS). The projects are characterized by close-knit, multidisciplinary cooperation between HUS clinicians, research institutes and leading health technology and ICT companies.

Vesa Varjonen, Vice President of Research and Technology at Planmeca and Matti Heikkilä, CTO of MetGen have been chosen as CTOs of the Year 2018.  The jury consisting of leading Finnish technology influencers emphasized the significant role of the awarded CTOS on renewal of the industry. The CTO of the Year Awards are given by Spinverse together with Technology Industries of Finland and Business Finland to highlight the importance of Chief Technology Officers work on the future competitiveness of Finnish industries. 

There is a growing need worldwide for digital health solutions. A new innovation ecosystem coordinated by HUS (The Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa) called CleverHealth Network, brings together the health technology knowhow, healthcare professionals and the precise healthcare data of HUS. The aim of the CleverHealth Network is a turnover of 11 billion euro and export earnings of 7,7 billion euro for the companies in the ecosystem.

Martin Curley of Intel Corporation, Marcel Wubbolts of Royal DSM and Jonathan O’Halloran of QuantuMDx have been awarded as European CTOs of the Year. All three are inspiring leaders who have paid special attention to sustainability and the creation of strong and broad technology collaboration communities. Based on their foresighted technology leadership, Europe has reached the forefront in three very different industries.