The first version of the Service that aims to help companies communicate their testing needs to the Testbeds was introduced in November. The Service is developed by the One Stop Funnel for Testing -project run by the City of Aarhus, Region Västerbotten and Arnora Oy.

The first version of the Service that enhances collaboration between the companies and the Nordic test actors was introduced on November 22 at Aarhus, Denmark. When completed the Service will lead to faster and more targeted testing processes as well as optimized use of resources.

The first version of The Service was successfully followed through with two Danish HealthTech companies at the DOKK 1, Aarhus, Denmark. During 3 years, the project’s aim is to test ‘The Service’ on 125 companies with the end goal of developing a screening and evaluation method that will prepare companies for testing in any area, including elderly care, mental care, and drug management in municipalities and hospitals. The method will also be introduced to as many public and private testbeds and living labs as possible, with the intention that the same method could be used for any company entering the testing funnel.

The trials of ‘The Service’ were a great success

The Service is built around a multidisciplinary board that efficiently evaluates and spars the participating companies. The board consists of representatives from Health and Care in Aarhus Municipality, Denmark, Livsmedicin from Region Västerbotten in Sweden, and business and technology experts from a Finnish company Arnora Oy.

After the implementation of The Service the participating company receives a very compact report card. The content of the report will help the company to communicate their testing needs to suggested Testbeds as well as it helps the Testbeds to understand the suitability of the companies product or solution for their testing environment. In addition to verifying companies testing needs, the board also highlights development ideas, valuable to the company’s further product development and commercial success.

———————————————————————————————–

Why ‘The Service’ is needed

The majority of public sector actors offering testing facilities are resource-limited, which reduces their capability to support innovations at a good enough pace. On the otherhand, from the companies’ point of view, financing the testing services is often a major challenge. We see that The Service developed in this project will smooth and accelerate the communication between the test organisations and the companies. The Report created during the implementation of The Service will help companies to describe their testing needs and the testing actors to understand the suitability of the product or solution of the company for their testing environment. After this understanding has been reached agreeing among others upon pricing of the testing service should become much easier.

The Nordic countries have great potential

“We have previously been leaders with, for example, Swedish Ericsson and Finnish Nokia, and we can be that again. We are good at collaborating across sectors in the Nordics, we have the economy to develop, and we can make health tech that will eventually become a world leader”, says Kenth Söderström, representative of the Region Västerbotten

“During the past years, we have worked extensively with information and communication technology within the HealthTech area. The challenge is that HealthTech companies often do not fully understand the needs of their customers. Companies speak engineer language while testing actors speak doctor language. Arnora has decided to place itself in between and act as an interpreter.”, says Jukka Niiranen, CEO at Arnora Oy.

Read a news article about the partner meeting in Aarhus published by Aarhus Municipality website: https://velfaerdsteknologi.aarhus.dk/internationalt/one-stop-funnel/make-the-nordics-great-again/