Companies that develop new solutions (products or services) to the field of healthcare in Finland face a challenge. Whereas in many domains, customer reference is a key sales factor, it is not always enough in healthcare. Especially in the case of a medical device or an instrument, the manufacturer is obligated to demonstrate that the relevant legislation is met, and requirements are complied with. To meet these demands, formal and scientifically valid testing is required from the manufacturer. The field of wellbeing solutions is changing in a similar fashion to healthcare as new laws and requirements are introduced. As in healthcare, co-development with the professionals has become a value of its own – and a strong indication of good quality.

In this project, a partial solution is provided to these problems (reachability and structural) in the form of intermediary platform. The platform brings together all healthcare testbeds (94) provided in Southwest Finland, a finds the most suitable testbed services for the companies. This is a tremendous improvement to the current situation as the companies may spend a significant amount of time in searching for the testbed services they need. This delay is a hindrance in terms of market-entry. Furthermore, the companies may not necessarily find the needed services, as what they need, is a combination of different testbed services. The intermediary platform will find the most suitable services, and if needed, combine different testbed services on behalf of the companies in a novel fashion. In other words, the platform will find the best possible testbed service that will meet the needs of the company.

The intermediary platform also answers to the needs of the provider organizations. The platform provides a way for creating more mature testbed services that are also of higher quality. Eventually, this will also lead to better healthcare solutions that meet the demands of the healthcare industry. The development of more mature testbed services that are of high quality, is also a prerequisite for (possible) commercial testbed services in the future. In this project, the intermediary platform is tested with the Hospital District of the Southwest Finland and Turku University of Applied Sciences.