Co­oper­a­tion between Fin­land and Ger­many: Ideas for the fu­ture

It is projects like this that show students special perspectives. The interdisciplinary and intercultural collaboration poses special challenges, creates new perspectives and the participants gain experience.

Problems derived directly from practice form the starting points of innovative solutions, which are then worked out in teams of three to four German and Finnish students. As an Innovation Project, the project is part of the master's program in Digital Health Management at HNU.

In this year's project, which was supervised on the HNU side by Prof. Dr. Peter Kuhn and Prof. Dr. Alexander Würfel, the students developed innovations for the healthcare industry. The innovations ranged from a social robot to counteract the loneliness of people in need of care who live alone, to apps for anxiety disorders or children's health and wireless solutions in the hospital sector, to a security app for hospitals and healthcare facilities with an integrated critical incident reporting system.

The teams of Finnish and German students started in November 2022, with the participation of HNU's Innovation Space. The projects were further elaborated in virtual teamwork and during the International Week in Kajaani in February 2023. The second International Week now served to finalize the planned publication on the project. This is to appear in the course of the year in a series of KAMK.

This year's project week at HNU also had a special character because Rauni Leinonen from KAMK, one of the main initiators and idea providers of the project, was present for the last time. She has accompanied the project on the Finnish side since its beginnings and will retire in the summer of 2023. A successor has already been found and will join the next project in the coming winter semester and support Kirsi Moisanen at KAMK.