Co-Created Health and Wellbeing, or CoheWe, promoted and harmonised the needs-oriented development of public social and health services in Helsinki, Vantaa, Tampere, and Oulu. The project also created preconditions for more effective collaboration with companies.
Approximately 150 companies and 830 social and health services professionals participated in the co-creation carried out under the project. In addition to this, 1,490 clients participated in the development and testing of services.
Results of the CoHeWe project
- The participating cities created an operating model and process for co-creation that clarified and consolidated cooperation during the project. The operating model was built utilising business cooperation models and development and experimentation platforms that had been previously used in the cities. The model was seen as providing the following benefits:
- Client/development needs: new services were based on real needs, and social and health services professionals were more committed to using the services, having participated in their development from the start. The participating cities’ shared development ideas became more visible and cooperation between different operators was easier.
- Development with companies: a shared tendering process reduced the bureaucracy of public procurements, and carrying out impact assessments in the planning phase of pilots facilitated the definition of shared goals. Cooperation between social and health services professionals and companies was transparent and roles were clear.
- Pilots and their assessment: impact assessments provided concrete information on the successes of the pilots carried out with companies, facilitating the comparison of results and learning between cities. They also made it possible to scale companies’ solutions from one city to another.
- The project involved assessing the impacts of both the operating model for co-creation and the pilots carried out with companies. As regards the operating model, the most notable impact was an increase in and the dissemination of know-how and the strengthening of networks. As regards the pilots, the most notable impact was an understanding of whether the solution worked, what kind of boundary conditions its use was subject to and how the solution should be developed further to facilitate implementation. Furthermore, so-called spillover effects, such as an increase in know-how, were identified.
- CoHeWe carried out a total of 35 pilots with companies. These included the testing of:
- a multisensory room in an assisted living environment in Helsinki, Tampere and Oulu
- a COVID-19 breathalyser in Helsinki
- the remote weight monitoring of patients with heart failure in Tampere
- the Mielipäiväkirja application for the remote condition monitoring of patients with depression in Oulu and Tampere.
- The CoHeWe co-creation model has since been utilised in the preparation of the follow-up projects of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare’s KATI programme in Oulu and Tampere, for example. The aim is to utilise the operating model in the development of cities’ social and health services in the future as well.
The primary objective of CoHeWe, the Co-created Health and Wellbeing project, was to promote cooperation between businesses and cities and enable the development and implementation of new, customer-oriented wellbeing and health services. The project was carried out by seven partners from four cities: Pirkanmaa Hospital District and the City of Tampere from Tampere; Forum Virium Helsinki from Helsinki (the operating environments of the City of Helsinki Social Services and Health Care Division served as platforms for the project pilots); the University of Oulu and the City of Oulu from Oulu, and Laurea University of Applied Sciences and the City of Vantaa from Vantaa. The CoHeWe project ran from 1 August 2018 to 31 December 2020 and had a total budget of approximately EUR 1.7 million.
Further information:
Niko Lönn
Project Manager
Tampere University Hospital
tel. +358 (0)40 515 9019, niko.lonn(at)pshp.fi