CEO's greetings

The sustainable foundation of a welfare society is based on the health and capabilities of its people. Health is at the core of everything, as healthy and functional people are the ones who create and build wealth and take care of those in need. They are the cornerstone of a prosperous society.

Currently, the management of healthcare systems in developed countries is guided by statistics and analysis of disease outcomes and mortality. The problem with this approach is that major public health issues, such as cardiovascular diseases, start to develop at least a decade before the onset of the disease. Therefore, analyzing disease outcomes and mortality means looking far into the past.

Additionally, the true effectiveness of today’s health policy decisions and interventions can only be seen in disease outcomes and mortality over a decade later. Managing the healthcare system with outdated information towards an unknown future is slow, inefficient, and risky.

If we let the number of people suffering from chronic diseases continue to grow at the current rate, soon we will no longer have enough people to run our societies. A huge portion of our collective effort goes toward treating diseases, and yet, due to the enormous number of sick people, we are unable to offer care to everyone. This will lead to a dramatic increase in healthcare inequality and eventually result in economic and societal chaos.

It is clear that this must change.

The healthcare system needs to be steered in a new way. Instead of focusing on historical disease events and mortality rates, we must look to the future and optimize our efforts to reduce the risk of future diseases. We can no longer make health policy decisions and then wait 10-15 years to see the results manifest in the form of disease outcomes. Instead, we must find a way to assess the impacts of health policy decisions much more rapidly within one or two years. We need to start looking forward, not backward.

Looking forward and steering our society towards a healthier future means that we start to systematically identify disease risks. When individuals at risk of developing a chronic disease can be identified early, healthcare services can be targeted to those who need them the most, and diseases can be effectively prevented. Predictive detection of disease risks at the population level is, therefore, the foundation of a better healthcare system.

Ten years ago, we didn't have the scalable tools to identify the disease risks of entire nations. While various risk calculators have been used in healthcare to assess, for example, cardiovascular disease risks, using these calculators has taken an unreasonable amount of time for healthcare professionals, and thus, their efficient and scalable implementation has not been possible.

Now, a scalable tool for identifying disease risks is available. Using the blood analysis technology developed by Nightingale Health, the risks of various common chronic diseases can be detected from a single blood sample. Because the test only requires one blood sample, it can be used to broadly assess disease risks at the population level.

Our technology enables a new forward-looking approach to managing the healthcare system, where a better future is systematically built by monitoring the impact of interventions on risks almost in real-time. This way we can implement a healthcare system where development efforts and funding are directed towards the operating models that have a measurably significant effect in reducing disease risks. This is the path towards a society with fewer sick people. Our technology enables all this without burdening the healthcare system or increasing costs – we help achieve better results with fewer resources.

There is a way towards a healthier future. Let’s start building it today.

Teemu Suna
CEO and Founder, Nightingale Health Plc