2024 was a significant milestone for artificial intelligence in the Finnish healthcare sector –here’s just some of what went on:
- DigiFinland, the national developer of public sector digital services, published a report on the possibilities of utilizing AI in social and health care that included 50 use cases for wellbeing services counties.i
- DigiFinland also published a report on AI legislation and interpretation recommendations for some generative AI use cases.ii
- Microsoft released its own white paper describing expected impacts of AI, hyper-automation, and platform solutions in social and health services.iii
- Another development organisation UNA identified and described 65 AI solutions or experiments from 16 wellbeing services counties.iv
- The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health mapped Finland’s social and health care AI ecosystemv, which quickly came to include 200 organizational members, and opened a funding call for piloting the best AI use cases in wellbeing services counties. These pilots are currently starting, coordinated by DigiFinland, and results will be presented at the end of 2025.vi
Many other advances related to AI in healthcare have occured during the past year. As I have been involved in a small part of this development, I woud like to share some of my observations in more detail. During 2024, I conducted dozens of interviews and several workshops with a range of relevent experts. Private and public participants included AI developers, welfare area ICT experts, social and health service leaders, lawyers, researchers, and specialists in medicine, healthcare, and social care.
Here are three key things I learned:
Observation 1: There was fairly unanimous agreement regarding the most useful AI use cases and applications. While there were many use cases, certain proposals and application areas were repeated over and over again. This can be a good sign – our experts seem confident of what kind of AI should be implemented in wellbeing services counties. On the other hand, if everyone is focused on the low hanging fruit, might it be that we are failing to focus on potentially more game-changing yet not as obvious use cases?
Observation 2: The discussions heavily emphasized the perspective of savings: wellbeing services county AI solutions should save either the employee’s time or the organization’s money – and preferably both. Efficiency, productivity, and reducing work were the key concepts. The possibility of AI producing new types of services and management was rarely considered. It seems clear that focusing almost exclusively on immediate savings significantly narrows the ideation of new use cases and the analysis of potential benefits of their implementation.
Observation 3: Across my many interviews and workshops with experts many, if not most, strongly felt that over-regulation – or rather its overly strict interpretation – was a problem. It was quite disturbing to hear an interviewee say that social and health organizations first read the legislation instead of doing, and then adapt the solution to comply with the laws. “Now we are going a little fearfully,” commented another. Technology development and especially innovation do not work this way. Although I myself have suggested that legislation should be considered already in the early development phase to avoid costly regulatory dead ends latervii, overly stiff regulation cannot be an innovation driver or the best starting point for operational development. Additionally, such regulation tends to exclude smaller players from competition between companies.
Conclusion: Innovate to win!
To summarize my observations: the perspective of innovations was largely missing from recent social and healthcare AI initiatives in Finland. Also missing were the perspectives of companies, business, growth, and markets. Although AI innovations were not the focus of the 2024 interviews, they should be brought to the forefront in 2025. A huge amount of money is currently being poured into AI development, and it will eventually be reflected in concrete – and potentially game-changing – applications. In the near future, when a company releases a truly functional AI doctor for the market, one which reliably makes diagnoses and gives good treatment recommendations, I hope it is invented, developed, and first launched in Finland, not the United States or elsewhere. But achieving this requires the entire social and health ecosystem to be open to new ways of providing services, and the willingness and risk-taking ability to try them in practice.
Currently, the savings and regulatory pressures of welfare areas not only curb ideation but also leave very little room for AI and ICT developers to operate innovatively and with growth in mind. However, it is precisely here that solutions could be found that have not yet been thought of.
A report mapping the economic opportunities of AI for Finlandviii states that AI can bring five billion in savings to healthcare and the public sector. To achieve this, companies should be allowed to operate more strongly on their own business terms and with growth in mind.
Reforming the regulation-driven social and health sector with technology-driven innovations produced by growth-seeking companies is the critical challenge – but will we do it?
Marketta Niemelä, Managing Consultant (PhD, M. Psych.), Nordic Healthcare Group
marketta.niemela@nhg.fi / +358 40 040 1777
Sources (mostly in Finnish):
DigiFinland. Sosiaali- ja terveydenhuollon tekoälyn käyttötapaukset ja lainsäädäntö. Selvitys ja suositukset yhteisistä tulkinnoista hyvinvointialueille. 2024; Available from: https://digifinland.fi/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/DigiFinland_Sosiaali-ja-terveydenhuollon-tekoalyn-kayttotapaukset-ja-lainsaadanto_04122024.pdf
DigiFinland. Tekoäly hyvinvointialueilla: sosiaali- ja terveydenhuollon käyttötapaukset ja kansallinen edistäminen (esiselvityksen loppuraportti) [Internet]. 2024 [cited 2024 Apr 12]. Available from: https://digifinland.fi/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/DigiFinland_tekoaly_loppuraportti_210324.pdf
Niemelä M, Laukka E, Kemppainen T. Uudet hyvinvointipalvelut ovat täällä – tekoäly tukee palvelun ja tarpeen kohtaamista. Microsoft Pulse [Internet]. 2024 [cited 2025 Jan 17]; Available from: https://pulse.microsoft.com/fi-fi/transform-fi-fi/healthcare-fi-fi/fa2-selvitys-uudet-hyvinvointipalvelut-ovat-taalla-tekoaly-tukee-palvelun-ja-tarpeen-kohtaamista/
https://unaoy.fi/ajankohtaista/hyvinvointialueilla-panostetaan-tekoalykehittamiseen/
https://digifinland.fi/sote-tekoalyn-ekosysteemi/
https://digifinland.fi/sote-tekoalyn-ekosysteemi/kokeiluprojektit/
Niemelä M, Keski-Säntti M, Nolvi K, & al. Clarifying the development phases and related regulation of predictive AI models for clinical decision-making: a framework proposal. In: Proceedings of eHealth2024: From Research to Impact on Digital Health and Welfare Services. Tampere, Finland; 2024. p. 41.
The economic opportunity of AI in Finland. Capturing the next wave of benefits from generative AI. Implement Consulting Group commissioned by Google; 2024. https://implementconsultinggroup.com/article/the-economic-opportunity-of-generative-ai-in-finland