Aleksandra Dobrego, General Manager at Terkko Health Hub, shares with us a candid view of the realities facing Finnish health startups — from funding and scaling challenges to the long road to clinical adoption — and why she is excited to see AI move from hype to real clinical and operational use.
What challenges do health start-ups face in Finland today?
The funding gap. Finland has strong seed-stage support, but scaling capital for later rounds is thin compared to markets like the UK or US, so a lot of promising companies either stall or get acquired early. On top of that, healthcare is a regulated, risk-averse buyer: getting a pilot with a hospital or getting reimbursement approved can take years, and most startups don’t have the runway for that. And Finland is a small home market, so founders have to think export from day one, which means navigating different regulatory and procurement systems almost immediately rather than growing into it.
What do the strongest founders have in common?
The ones who do well treat clinicians and hospital staff as co-designers, not just end users — they’re in the wards, listening, before they’re selling. They’re also realistic about the sales cycle: healthcare doesn’t reward speed, so the founders who succeed pace themselves financially and mentally for a long game instead of burning out chasing a fast yes.
Where is Finnish health innovation heading?
I think we’ll see more convergence around data — genomics, real-world data from FinnGen and hospital systems, and AI models trained on it — becoming the actual export product, not just a supporting layer. And I expect the line between medtech, digital health, and life sciences to blur further, especially as hospitals like HUS push toward more integrated, data-driven care models.
What are you most excited about right now?
Watching AI move from hype to actual clinical and operational use — diagnostics support, workflow tools that free up clinician time, that kind of thing — paired with Finland’s genuinely excellent health data infrastructure. Very few countries can combine population-level data quality with a research and hospital ecosystem this tightly connected, and I think that combination is going to produce some genuinely category-defining companies.
What separates the startups that succeed from those that struggle?
The startups that struggle often build a great product but underestimate how long validation and procurement take, and run out of money before the market catches up. The ones that succeed build funding strategies and milestones around that reality from the start, and they use the waiting time productively — deepening clinical relationships, gathering evidence, building the right partnerships — instead of just waiting for the sale.
