The many functions of testbeds
Many hospital districts, university hospitals and universities of applied sciences in Finland, as well as towns and cities, offer excellent opportunities for developers to test their health and well-being products and services in authentic environments. These opportunities are provided by testbeds.
What is a testbed?
Testbeds (also known as test platforms and test environments) are environments that simulate real-life treatment or care situations. In such environments, companies can seek feedback on their ideas and solutions under development, in addition to users' experiences of products already on the market. Testbeds support the research and development of products and services in authentic customer and expert environments. They also provide an excellent training and induction environment for testbed operators and companies alike.
Testbeds are valuable environments for training, research and development. User experiences and clinical proof gained during experiments support design decisions and prototyping. Partnerships with experts, users, patients and other stakeholders provide developers with unique practical information about the use of products or services.
Testbeds online
Communication is an important part of our work, and we built a new website about test environments during the spring. The website provides comprehensive information about operators serving Finnish customers and some test platforms aimed at the international market.
Of the Finnish testbeds, HUS and Oulu Health Labs have joined the Nordic Proof community, which is one channel for international cooperation and expansion.
We also communicate to the international public in other ways. In early June, seven testbeds showcased their operations at the English-language Health Tuesday event organized by Business Finland.
Business Finland is actively involved in cooperation among Finnish test environments
Our goal is to increase interaction between test platforms and also enable access to services from abroad in cooperation with platforms that have an interest in and potential for this. In Finland, we are aiming to build a comprehensive network of operators, through which a company can have access to the best test environment for their purposes anywhere in Finland.
In terms of our "Invest in Finland" mission, testbeds constitute a strategic national resource that attracts investments, new international product development operations and even completely new RDI units to Finland with its services.
We collaborate with Finnish testbeds, aiming to create a one-stop-shop community. The group involved in this work has grown delightfully in recent years and currently includes more than ten operators, forming a community of dozens of professionals. Those involved see regular meetings, the exchange of information and promotion as important and useful activities that they want to continue.
Join our next workshop
Our next joint workshop will be organized as a physical event by HealthHUB Tampere and Business Tampere on April 12-13, 2022. Main theme is going to be co-operation between companies and testbeds. We are waiting for an active participation of health sector companies and influencers. There will be a web streaming on Tuesday afternoon April 12 for even larger audience. More information about the workshop will be published soon. Stay tuned!
Please ask for more information: Marco Roth, marco.roth (at) pshp.fi, +358 40 800 7865 and Veli-Matti Lahti, veli-matti.lahti (at) businesstampere.com, +358 40 664 5206.
The blog post was originally published on June 22, 2021, and is updated by recent workshop information.
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