FLYER — Devel­op­ment of a med­ical device test­ing ser­vice as a col­lab­o­ra­tion between ecosys­tems

Health tech­nol­o­gy forms a sig­nif­i­cant indus­try, which is a grow­ing high-tech export sec­tor. The impor­tance of health tech­nol­o­gy increas­es as cit­i­zens age and the birth rate decreas­es, lead­ing to des­per­ate need for user-friend­ly health tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions to pro­vide bet­ter treat­ment for cus­tomers, help for pro­fes­sion­als and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty for health­care. In health care, patients will be increas­ing­ly mon­i­tored at home with wear­able wire­less devices, which are made pos­si­ble by using print­ed elec­tron­ics, but the chal­lenge for the growth of the com­pa­nies in the field is e.g. get­ting feed­back from doc­tors and patients at dif­fer­ent stages of the prod­uct devel­op­ment cycle and the lack of exten­sive devel­op­ment and inno­va­tion envi­ron­ments that sup­port all aspects of prod­ucts (hard­ware, soft­ware, con­nec­tiv­i­ty) at dif­fer­ent stages of prod­uct devel­op­ment.

North­ern Ostro­both­nia has excel­lent con­di­tions to respond to this chal­lenge with the coop­er­a­tion of the Oulu region’s ecosys­tems — OuluHealth, RadioPark and Print­o­Cent. The region’s high lev­el of exper­tise in var­i­ous areas of dig­i­tal health tech­nol­o­gy and unique research, devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing envi­ron­ments cre­ate a strong foun­da­tion on which to build inter­na­tion­al and soci­ety-renew­ing inno­va­tion and new busi­ness. The Oulu region already has strong tech­nol­o­gy know-how and devel­op­ment and test­ing envi­ron­ment ser­vices that sup­port dig­i­tal health tech­nol­o­gy appli­ca­tions such as the OuluHealth ecosys­tem, and wire­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty such as the RadioPark ecosys­tem. Oulu also has a unique Print­ed Intel­li­gence clus­ter, Print­o­Cent, which has strong exper­tise in the devel­op­ment, test­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing of health tech­nol­o­gy prod­ucts using print­ed elec­tron­ics. By strength­en­ing the coop­er­a­tion of the afore­men­tioned ecosys­tems and devel­op­ing e.g. the OYSTER ref­er­ence cen­ter to also cov­er the testing/validation of the phys­i­cal device (hard­ware), test­ing of health tech­nol­o­gy prod­ucts in all main areas (hard­ware, soft­ware and wire­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty (5G/6G)) can be pro­vid­ed by the region.

The aim of the project is to strength­en the region’s role as an attrac­tive cen­ter for research, devel­op­ment, test­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing of health tech­nol­o­gy prod­ucts, as well as the con­nec­tion of oper­a­tors to inter­na­tion­al net­works and val­ue chains. The main goals of the project are:

1) Define a ref­er­ence ser­vice mod­el for the phys­i­cal device test­ing ser­vice of health tech­nol­o­gy prod­ucts to sup­port the prod­uct devel­op­ment of com­pa­nies.

2) A con­crete health tech­nol­o­gy demo is pre­pared — the devel­op­ment process imi­tates the stages of the com­pa­nies’ prod­uct devel­op­ment and iden­ti­fies the needs of the dif­fer­ent stages for the test­ing ser­vice. The afore­men­tioned ref­er­ence ser­vice mod­el will be cre­at­ed against the iden­ti­fied needs.

3) Expand and strength­en coop­er­a­tion between region­al ecosys­tems (OuluHealth, RadioPark, Print­o­Cent) and actors through coop­er­a­tion events (e.g. clus­ter meet­ings, com­pa­ny vis­its, sem­i­nars)

4) Increase the vis­i­bil­i­ty of Oulu as a lead­ing ecosys­tem of health tech­nol­o­gy and print­ed intel­li­gence by giv­ing pre­sen­ta­tions at nation­al and inter­na­tion­al net­work events and con­fer­ences, acti­vate new com­pa­nies in coop­er­a­tion and cre­ate tempt­ing invest­ment pos­si­bil­i­ties in the area through coop­er­a­tion events and vis­its.

The project strength­ens the region’s role as a part of the inter­na­tion­al val­ue chain of health tech­nol­o­gy prod­ucts, espe­cial­ly as a strong research, devel­op­ment, test­ing, and man­u­fac­tur­ing clus­ter. This cre­ates the con­di­tions to gen­er­ate new busi­ness — both for test­ing, devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing ser­vices and the com­pa­nies that offer them — cre­at­ing new play­ers, which strength­ens the region’s vital­i­ty.

The project is co-fund­ed by the Euro­pean Union.