We mapped the Health Ecosystem of Turku Business Region

One goal of Upgraded is to help startups navigate through different ecosystem organisations and find the relevant collaborators. We continue our initiative to map the main health innovation ecosystems in Finland for the benefit of our community but also the international organisations interested in the Finnish market. Last year we mapped the Helsinki region and now moving on to Turku – the strongest expertise cluster of the life science field in Finland.

Together with Turku Business region, we are presenting the health ecosystem map of Turku that gathers the most important service providers in the health and life-science sectors.

Check the full map & station descriptions here

Life science industry accounts for around 20% of Southwest Finland’s total turnover, with 50% of Finland’s pharmaceutical exports comes from Turku region companies. Life sciences employ 20% of the industrial workforce in Southwest Finland, and every year, around 1,000 life-science students are graduating from 5 major universities.

The coordination of the business and innovation services in the region is the responsibility of the regional development company Turku Science Park, which is also the biggest centre of health and biosciences in Turku and co-ordinator of Nordic Mentor Network for Entrepreneurship programme in Finland.

The focus lies primarily in the research and business operation in pharmaceutical and diagnostics industries, as well as health foods and materials technology. Research, innovation and product development activities are enhanced through the expertise offered by the Health Campus Turku network, and the concrete testing and development platforms and services. Established in Turku in spring 2013, Auria Biobank is Finland’s first hospital biobank, and the Turku PET Centre is one of the biggest centres of excellence in imaging in Europe and among the best known in the world.

Within the Health Campus Turku network the Hospital District of Southwest Finland, the University of Turku, Åbo Akademi University, Turku University of Applied Sciences, Novia University of Applied Sciences and Turku Science Park Ltd work together to promote the business operation based on high-quality expertise in the social affairs and health care sectors.

The commercialisation of university-based research projects is supported by such programs like SparkUp, Life-Science Accelerator, Spark Finland.

Important private drug development and diagnostics companies in the Turku region include, e.g. Bayer, Biovian, Faron Pharmaceuticals, Forendo Pharma, Hytest, Orion, and PerkinElmer, and in food industry Bioferme, Eckes Granini, HKScan, Nestle, and Raisio.