At a Slush side event, start-ups can hear about opportunities in the Finnish healthcare and social welfare sector and internationally
What kind of ideas does the healthcare sector want to invest in?

At the Slush side event, public sector stakeholders and established companies in the field of health technology will present concrete examples of projects that the healthcare sector wants to carry out with start-ups in future.

They will also tell what chances the public sector has to invest in new ideas. The event is organised by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Business Finland and the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), and it is expected to boost collaboration between growth companies and the public health and social services system.

The keynote speaker of the event is Dr. Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, who will speak about the newest trends in health and wellbeing technology. Dr. Ghebreyesus' speech will be commented by Pekka Soini, CEO of Business Finland, and Päivi Sillanaukee, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.

At the event, companies will hear how Business Finland is able to help in making ideas to become products that can enter the world market. In addition, investors and healthcare sector decision-makers will give feedback to start-ups in a pitching competition, resembling the Shark Tank format.

Genome Centre will open new opportunities for private companies

The Slush side event will discuss, among other topics, what opportunities utilisation of genomic data can open for private companies.

The use of genomic data, i.e. information about an individual’s whole genetic makeup, will rapidly increase in healthcare in the next few years. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health is currently preparing a Genome Centre that will provide a centralised storage place for genomic data. The Genome Centre will be a new centre of excellence that will store genomic data and generate updated interpretations of the data through international collaborations.

The Genome Centre will open new opportunities for businesses to develop an innovation ecosystem and build an interesting commercial environment in Finland. The Centre will provide genomic data for research purposes through a centralised high-quality process that safeguards data protection. Start-ups may offer their products and services for the Genome Centre or consumer customers.

Open data

The event also includes presentations on open data offered by the public sector. The ongoing health and social services reform, among other things, creates new needs to build systems, for example to support knowledge management.  Software developers can search for a variety of regional data from the open data interfaces of the National Institute for Health and Welfare THL.

THL has the largest open data resources on health and social data in Finland. Open interfaces enable building new applications based on THL's data. Information published as open data do not include any personal data or other secret information. When opening the data, all direct identification information will be removed from it.

Streaming is available

https://webcast.reloadmedia.fi/player/?video=S201811231236420

Further information

Slush 2018 Official Side event: Moving on up – partner with public sector for growth in health

Slush side event

Jukka Lähesmaa, Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, tel. +358 2951 63139, [email protected]

Marko Lähteenmäki, National Institute for Health and Welfare, tel. +358 2952 47189, [email protected]

Genome Centre

Sandra Liede, Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, tel. +358 2951 63633, [email protected]

Open data

Antti Tuomi-Nikula, National Institute for Health and Welfare, tel. +358 2952 48645, [email protected]