Cross-border collaboration for learning, communication, and producing new technologies and services
The aim of NACCOP (Nordic Arctic Co-creation Platform) is to build a digital platform for interprofessional cross-border collaboration and innovation processes. The partners of the project are from northern Sweden and Finland. In the autumn of 2021, the NACCOP project interviewed representatives of the Oulu region ecosystems (N = 10) from the fields of social and health care, education, and research. The interviews aimed to describe the present situation and future needs for developing their services.
Interprofessional collaboration is needed to promote inventions and new business
The interviewees had a collaboration with several innovation-, development-, and testing networks (for example OuluHealthLabs, sOULUtions innovation workshops, Oulu GateWay Arctic development -platform). In the future, getting to the international top, RDI in the national networking as well as in multi-professional international networking is needed. The common topics are digital health and wireless services development. They also mentioned the need for common technology and information platform for regional innovation and testing. Solutions and research are needed to measure the effectiveness and facilitation of innovations.
Common challenges increase the need for Nordic co-operation
At the Nordic level, the interviewees emphasized collaboration, sharing of expertise and information as well as sharing good practices. Thus, building new types of networks with companies and service systems is important. The importance of international projects is significant in expanding networks. Active collaboration helps us to learn from each other and share information and create new technologies and services. As a challenge for the future, the interviewees mentioned the development and utilization of artificial intelligence technology in health and social services. According to them, artificial intelligence is not yet widely used, but there is a lot of potential in the use of AI. The perceived challenges with data use are as follows: The use of data collected in healthcare requires the customer’s permission, there is a lot of competition between companies, The data is not currently located in the same place, and it is still unclear how to combine the data
The key is to get people to join the network
The interviewees listed their wishes for the NACCOP platform:
- Different people and organizations must be easily accessible
- The platform will help to find suitable partners for building education and research networks
- It can deepen cooperation between companies to create a Nordic brand
- Using the platform can be useful in practice to share experience and get ideas for new tools
- It helps collaboration with companies and common product presentations
In Finland, the reform of healthcare, social welfare, and rescue services will be transferred the responsibility for organizing these services from municipalities to wellbeing services counties from the beginning of the year 2023. In the Oulu region wellbeing service county is called `Pohjois-Pohjanmaan hyvinvointialue´ and, a new organization for health and social services is being created together with interprofessional stakeholders. The services will be organized and developed at the regional level from the beginning of the year 2023. The aim is that all the citizens will have equal opportunities to get services. Stakeholders and professionals share ideas and improve services together. Good practices are sought and applied to both small municipalities and large cities.
This blog was written by NACCOP- project workers
Principal lecturer Tiina Tervaskanto-Mäentausta and senior lecturer Eija Hautala, OUAS
Please contact us if you are interested to join NACCOP -work and registering to NACCOP-platform
Naccop-platform: https://naccopproject.wordpress.com
and in FaceBook Naccop Public Discussion Group
