Talking about the future of health technologies with Heli Teerenhovi
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.
Heli Teerenhovi, a holder of M.Sc. degree in Cell Biology and B.Sc. degree in Pharmacy, worked in the pharmaceutical and MedTech industry for over 13 years before joining Spinverse in mid-October. Heli’s wide experience ranges from team leading, close customer collaboration in hospital environment, project management on clinical trials and Real World Data, implementation of new diagnostic tools and innovative health economics solutions in Finland.
Heli’s first weeks with Spinverse have passed very quickly and she has already learned a lot about the opportunities of EU funding have to offer for innovative projects. Her first impression has been that the companies or organisations that could take on such opportunities to boost their growth and R&D are not always fully aware of them. This is one of the areas Heli is looking forward to work on with companies developing innovative solutions, especially in health technologies.
According to Heli, at Spinverse she wants to bring with her a viewpoint of the patient and healthcare staff when tackling the challenges emerging within health care. Her insights are of the practical kind within large entities. What attracted Heli in Spinverse was the large scope of various industries in which Spinverse operates and the possibility to learn about the best practices across different industry sectors. She is looking forward to viewing matters from new angles brought by the best practices from various sectors.
Future trends of health technologies
Heli explains that people are currently collecting a lot of wellbeing information on themselves and this is an interesting phase preceding actual health data. Future will show how wellbeing data could be combined with health data. The management, analysis and processing of health data is an area where we still have a lot to learn.
Preventive health care and diagnostics are becoming increasingly important when AI and machine learning are used to automate data management and detection of signals for illnesses. They all target at spotting illnesses at an early stage by using data from different sources. Due to the changes caused by the COVID-19, remote diagnostic, remote monitoring and care are also something that will need to be further developed in the future.
Enhanced diagnostics together with new targeted treatment options are helping patient therapies to become more personalised every day. We are no longer treating large disease groups, but the various data sources are being integrated and therapies and medication are directed to those who can benefit the most from them.
Harnessing the latest technologies for health care through collaboration
In Finland, to harness latest technologies to enhance the diagnostics and patient care can be developed in close cooperation between clinicians and high-tech providers. A good example of such collaboration is CleverHealth Network where Spinverse supports the ecosystem by facilitating and seeking collaboration opportunities and increasing awareness among the scientific circles. Spinverse’s Principal Consultant Markku Heino has been working with CleverHealth Network from the very start in 2017 and has now taken Heli onboard to bring her expertise to benefit the ecosystem.
After joining Spinverse, Heli has already learned first-hand about the benefits of working in ecosystems. When actors from various fields join their forces, collaboration often brings faster results as a wider selection of expertise is brought to the table. Heli is keen to learn about ecosystems also from other industries and get relevant start-ups to join ecosystem as active members. She hopes to be able to enhance the collaboration between clinical experts and company experts.
When asked about her expectations on working at Spinverse, Heli sums up: ”I am excited to be able to work with different industry representatives within the health sector and seek solutions to enhance this collaboration. I vision equal, safe and effective health care at the core of my work. The better the patients can be directed to personalised care, the bigger the cost savings. All tools developed along the way will contribute to the effectiveness of patient care, and ultimately to the wellbeing of each patient.” Stay tuned for more news as Heli continues to build the health technologies organisation at Spinverse.