Philips InnoHub:
A shelter for creation
In January 2009, Philips Applied Technology opened an InnoHub in the City of Espoo. A joint effort between The Technical Research Institute of Finland VTT, Philips Applied Technology and City of Espoo's Well Life Center, the InnoHub concept helps companies turn innovative ideas into a real business.
"The InnoHub is a physical place for generating and evaluating ideas. The Espoo Hub focuses on health and wellbeing, and the premises include a living room area, hospital room simulator and a nurses' station. The space is an open one, and one of the ideas is to emulate connected care," says Rob Kommeren, an innovation consultant with Philips Applied Technology.
"We're interested in turning existing technology into new applications. To do this, it's crucial to get different views and the user feedback into the equation. The power of the InnoHub concept is in closing the loop from idea to commercial product. We chose Finland because our studies showed that it was in the top 10 innovation hot spots in the world."
Kommeren says that the interest shown by the Finnish Government further supported the decision.
"The open-space structure enables, among other things, interesting applications of wireless technology in sharing and storing health information. For instance, how you could retrieve the data from a personal device, such as a heart rate monitor and upload it onto your personal, web-based health record," Kommeren adds.
The story was first published in Tekes' publication Passion for Life - Join the pioneers of healthcare (pdf)
