The FinnWell programme has shown the way for the future of health care
Tekes' five-year FinnWell programme has helped the Finnish health care system redefine itself. Developing innovations in the field is now more systematic and coordinated. Above all, the work done in the programme benefits ordinary citizens and opens up important business and growth opportunities for companies.“FinnWell resulted in numerous permanent practices and new innovations. The total volume of projects funded in the programme amounted to EUR 177 million. Funding was directed in particular to the development of diagnostic and care technologies, healthcare IT products and services as well as healthcare service innovations and processes,” says Director Pia Harju-Autti.
In future, Tekes will increasingly focus on customer-driven development of service production structures as well as on the growth of companies. For this purpose, Tekes launched the Innovations in Social and Health Care Services programme in the summer of 2008.
The programme promotes extensive development crossing administrative and organisational boundaries between, for example, social services, basic healthcare and specialised healthcare.
Examples of the results of the FinnWell programme
Early detection of pre-eclampsia
Significant health and national economy benefits can be gained from the screening of pregnant mothers and of newborn children for rare metabolic disorders.
Wallac Oy has been developing laboratory systems for screening tests under Tekes' FinnWell programme. One of the products under development is a test that helps predict pre-eclampsia at an early stage.
Pre-eclampsia is a problem in only approximately five percent of pregnancies. Still, the annual cost of the illness in, for example, the USA is approximately seven billion dollars. The majority of the costs are incurred by unnecessary screenings when tests fail to detect mothers who are at risk.
The international PerkinElmer Group has centralised the product development of its screening tests in its Finnish subsidiary Wallac.
An intelligent patient record system of the future
The Finnish Medical Society Duodecim has been developing an intelligent decision support service under the FinnWell programme. It enables an information system connected to an electronic patient record to automatically combine patient data and medical data and to produce information such as patient-specific treatment recommendations, reminders of deadlines and warnings of potential errors, facilitating a physician's work and making it more efficient.
Specific individual information is retrieved from electronic patient record systems and, in the future, from a national electronic archive. General medical information is retrieved from various medical databases.
The system does not make decisions regarding treatment. The physician decides whether to use the decision support system and, if so, the role of the system is to support decisions regarding treatment. The physician is always the one who makes the decisions.
A pilot of the decision support system has been launched. The system can be rolled out more widely after interfaces to electronic patient record systems are in place and the national patient data archive is in operation.
More information
FinnWell Programme
Soili Helminen 02.06.2009