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Testbeds. Roundtable summary.

Terveysteknologia ry - Healthtech Finland

Terveytt? teknologialla - For people who care

发布日期: 2022年6月13日

Post 5 in a series of posts from the project on testbeds, public procurement, and regulations commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment.

Last year, we at Upgraded were commissioned by the?Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment to study the experiences of Finnish health startups in three areas: testbeds, public procurement, and regulations. We jumped at the opportunity to investigate these topics separately and in connection with each other. At this point, when asked what areas they were finding difficult to tackle, our members would name one or all of them.

The report turned out to be extensive; in this post series, we would like to break it down by topic. This time, we will share the roundtable summary on the topic of testing and validation.

The roundtable on testbeds that Upgraded held together with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment became a small forum where experts and startups could share their opinions on the topic. The discussion started with emphasizing the importance of testbeds as real-life testing environments for innovative products and their potential to attract investment to Finland. If Finland can show an extensive testbed network, it can be leveraged when inviting international capital. New testbeds keep appearing every year, showing momentum. The goal of Business Finland is to bring testbeds together and make them work almost as one entity, and they are implementing programs and events towards this goal (1, 2).

The definition of a testbed came into question next. The participants agreed that it is vague and needs refinement. Currently, it is not clear which testing environments and setups can qualify for testbeds and which cannot. What all testbeds seem to have in common now is that they provide a simulated environment for customers to test their? solutions. However, some companies do not need real environments, they just want to bounce their ideas off and get feedback. The participants thus noted a mismatch between how public entities and companies look at testbeds: companies want to collaborate and cut the costs down, organizations need to communicate the results to the public and stay solvable.

The question of who should bear the cost of testing arose multiple times during the roundtable discussion. Startups obviously have very limited resources and letting them do the testing for free would boost their development. However, quite often public organizations cannot subsidize businesses by law. A compromise would be to keep the fees reasonably low and change the attitude of testbeds from providing a service to entering collaboration. The CleverHealth network shows promise in that regard.

The participants also discussed that testbeds are not viable without competent and motivated clinicians who have time to spend on innovations. There is no doubt that medical personnel do not have enough time to help companies to test their products. To remedy this issue, the attitude on the highest political level needs to change, facilitating ‘creator culture’. It would be greatly appreciated if the government and the ministries encouraged and supported hospital collaboration with startups both financially and in terms of coordination.

You can read the report in full?here.

Shoot an email to our Head of Research,?Alena, if you have any questions about the study:?[email protected]

The series Table of content:

Post 1. Introduction.