GE Healthcare launches startup campus Health Innovation Village to help entrepreneurs speed up health tech solutions

Helsinki, Finland – October 28, 2014 – Today GE Healthcare officially opens Health Innovation Village, its first health tech startup campus, at its Finnish headquarters with the Minister of Economic Affairs in Finland, Jan Vapaavuori and the Mayor of Helsinki, Jussi Pajunen.

The Health Innovation Village saw its first inhabitants move in this summer. Today, it is the home of 20 health tech startups operating in the fields of wireless technologies, sensors as well as apps and cloud services.

The Health Innovation Village has been launched at GE’s Helsinki offices to create an ecosystem of health tech startups. Health Tech is the largest and most important Finnish export sector representing 47% of Finnish hi-tech exports.

GE has a history of working with startups through GE Ventures. The Health Innovation Village is the latest development to build on this tradition. A key sentiment behind the campus is that collaboration feeds innovation.

”The health sector needs speedy clinically relevant and affordable innovations. We believe the magic formula is the combination of large global corporations and agile startups, co-located. We wanted to bring them closer, because innovations are created when people meet. Living close to startups, exchanging ideas and eventually working together on innovative projects is fresh thinking. Eventually, this benefits our customers, too,” says Didier Deltort, Managing Director of GE Finland.
The Health Innovation Village is located in GE’s Finnish headquarters in Vallila, Helsinki. Other speakers at the Grand Opening included Didier Deltort and serial entrepreneur, investor Timo Ahopelto.

The Health Innovation Village includes startups covering technology innovations that feed into many aspects of health such as comfort for premature babies, monitoring, maintaining fitness and other challenges.

About GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services to meet the demand for increased access, enhanced quality and more affordable healthcare around the world. GE (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter – great people and technologies taking on tough challenges. From medical imaging, software & IT, patient monitoring and diagnostics to drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies and performance improvement solutions, GE Healthcare helps medical professionals deliver great healthcare to their patients.

SOURCE: GE Healthcare