AI and medtech ecosystem in Finland – opportunities for SMEs

Finland has recently been pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) in making it available for small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) that constitute 99% of all businesses in Europe.

This is a critical task, as at the European level, it has been recognised that corporations and larger organisations are the primary benefactors of AI technologies, even though SMEs hold great potential for the introduction of AI in business. Health and medtech sector is of particular interest, as over the past 20 years, health technology has brought nearly €14 billion to Finland’s foreign trade.

Creating industry specific knowledge and skills in AI

AI is here, the change is inevitable, and it requires taking the debate from the general level towards industry-specific training, mentoring and accelerator activities. An example of this is AI-TIE accelerator launched in April 2022 that has welcomed 16 Finnish SMEs in health and medtech sector on the journey to identify AI-related business opportunities and advance related solutions. This enables the creation and deepening of industry-specific AI expertise and thus supports companies operating in the industry.

While healthtech is centred around optimising personal and preventative care, the medical technology – medtech dimension focuses on therapeutic technologies and medical devices that treat existing medical issues and diagnostic technologies that detect medical conditions. A special characteristic of Finland is that the emphasis is placed on preventive care. When it comes to AI development, it is a potentially interesting hypothesis whether inviting both angles and seeing them as elements of the same ecosystem, could produce meaningful outputs.

Emphasis on the quality and original ideas

In contrast to aiming for economies of scale, the strength of Finland has been in specialisation strategy, when it comes to AI applications. The development of well-focused, value-adding products, services, and concepts in AI yields notable results. As a recent example: Finnish company Aiforia Technologies, which offers image analysis software utilising AI. Aiforia was established in 2013 and is listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange since December 2021. The company’s business model is based on the development and utilisation of AI models for medical research and diagnostics.

There is currently a plethora of Finnish AI focused companies in health and medtech, and as an outcome of COVID-19 pandemic we currently observe the boost in diagnostics solutions. In fact, these can be classified as dynamic growth companies, supported by the trend that the pandemic has invigorated digitalisation and the demand for AI-based solutions. Next to Aiforia, Helsinki-located Disior creates 3D image analytics in diagnostics, Mvision operates as a cloud-based software service provider for radiotherapy treatment planning, Cerenion from the Finnish city of Oulu focuses on brain function diagnostics, Tampere-based Neuroevent uses AI to tackle seizure detection.

Finnish success stories demonstrate that AI applied for the improvement in the quality of diagnosis decisions has valuable positive impact on the quality of treatment and can make working processes much faster and more efficient.

Piloting solutions in Finland

The sector is historically strong in Finland, and in 2021 the value of Finland’s exports of health tech products rose to €2.52 billion, indicating an increase of 3.6% (Healthtech Finland 2022). Furthermore, Finland has a notable AI R&D output in health and medtech, as translated to the remarkably high rank of submitted patents – 1% of all in Europe. As a result, Finland holds 8th rank in EU27 for submitted patents in AI in healthcare and 11th rank in scientific papers. (European Commission 2021.)

Finland’s AI strengths are in expertise, high-quality data, and collaboration (ETLA 2019). There is a good availability of AI solution developers and growing skills in the area. This is matched with the need on the SMEs side. The survey results carried out among AI-TIE AI Accelerator’s health & medtech companies indicate that over half of them intend to recruit professionals with AI-related expertise in one year.

Storage and sharing of general public healthcare data have taken leaps forward. An example of this is Findata – a centralised service to grant permits for the secondary use of social and health care data and improve data protection for individuals. Focus areas for further strengthening of the sector’s ecosystem in Finland invite for cooperation between companies in going international, closer work between private and public sector and the ongoing need for multi-disciplinary approach to AI among organisations focused on research, development, innovation, higher education institutes and business. 

Sources

ETLA (2019). Digital Barometer (2019). Facts and statistics credit: Finland Statistics Center, company register, Vainu.io; ETLA calculations: link, visited September 8, 2021.

European Commission (2021). Study on eHealth, Interoperability of Health Data and Artificial Intelligence for Health and Care in the European Union. Artificial Intelligence for health and care in the EU. Written by PwC 2021, publication visited December 1, 2021: link.

Healthtech Finland (2022). The export of healthtech continues to grow - Corona has driven the export of laboratory diagnostics. Published May 4, 2022, visited October 26, 2022: link.