Europe's healthcare field faces a critical challenge where innovative solutions are often marketed outside the continent to circumvent stringent regulations. Moreover, the sector's fragmentation and lag in digitalization compared to other industries hinder progress significantly. How can we begin to solve this?

Jukka Laurinmaa is the Head of Innokas Medical’s SW unit Digious specializing in regulated medical software and data driven solutions. Jukka has been working with the Finnish technology industries for years and has seen how the field has developed from device to connected devices to data driven solutions. However, this requires a significant change in the daily working methods and procedures, so change needs to start from there.

“My mission is to find practical healthcare solutions that prioritize efficiency, task automation, and error reduction through digitalization. By harnessing innovative technologies, I want to deliver transformative advancements that enhance the quality of care, streamline workflows, and improve patient outcomes,” Jukka says about his visions on the field.

Jukka finds fragmentation of the field to be one of its biggest challenges. He says that we need to be able to bring new technologies and new digital solutions to healthcare if we want to have any chance to solve the challenges healthcare is facing today, the biggest of which is the lack of coordination between organizations. “The focus lies too deep in competing and infighting when it should be in bettering people’s lives through improved healthcare,” Jukka says.

Having multiple organizations use the same digital solutions is one of Jukka’s visions to solve fragmentation. “Systematic harmonization and embracing common practices and standards are essential for establishing an ideal operating model. This is especially important in the realm of mobile devices and applications, where widespread adoption across organizations is desired, and leveraging digitalization becomes paramount for maximizing efficiency and saving time,” Jukka suggests as a direction to find solutions.
 
Healthcare digitalization is said to solve many of the challenges the healthcare field is facing today. Data is supposed to improve patient care quality, help develop precision healthcare, preventive healthcare and more efficient practices and working environment for the staff. Just to mention a few.  
  
However, this takes leadership and the kind of cooperation we haven’t yet seen. Healthcare digitalization does not happen automatically, nor does it solve all the challenges the healthcare field is facing with a snap of your fingers. We have the building blocks for setting the standard and keeping Europe and Finland on the forefront of Healthtech innovations. But we might as well stumble on the way if we don’t find ways to work together.  
  
Digious wants to be part of the solution. “We have accumulated concrete know-how and want to develop ourselves and digital healthcare further while moving toward making ideals into reality,” Jukka says.

Jukka was partaking in Radical Health Festival in June, an event which was strongly calling for more radical ways to tackle the challenges and find solutions to a more sustainable healthcare.  The event narrative shared the same theme: solutions call for unprecedented cooperation in the field. 

Innokas Medicals software unit Digious