Unseen investment wave bridging healthcare sector gaps in Central and Eastern Europe
Now is the right time to establish contacts in the local markets and stakeholders in the region.
Business Finland sheds light on how to grasp business opportunities from EU recovery and resilience facility with focus on Central and Eastern European region (CEE) and healthcare sector investments. On 15th of June the first Recovery webinar on Healthcare transformation in Central and Eastern Europe successfully took place with numerous participation of Finnish companies. During the event a comprehensive study analyzing the post-pandemic recovery plans in the six CEE region health systems was presented. These countries are Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, and Croatia.
The report is now available for the benefit of the Finnish suppliers of solutions and services.
In short, the EU 2021-2027 recovery facility contains millions of Euros business potential for Finnish companies, which offer solutions for healthcare sector, hospital construction and health data or e-health platforms. The CEE region countries present a considerable healthcare performance gap in comparison to EU averages. Now long-term RRF (Recovery and Resilience Facility) investments are set to stimulate and correct some of the gaps.
"Finnish companies have now a unique opportunity to provide innovative and sustainable solutions for the considerable investments taking place in these six CEE countries with focus on modernization of the existing healthcare clinics and structures, digitization and e-health initiatives for the healthcare sector" comments Agnieszka Wrobel, Senior Advisor from Business Finland in Warsaw.
Especially interesting is Poland's considerable investment in improving the infrastructure around health services and up-scaling outdated medical equipment. From the digitalization point of view Poland has several e-health projects moving ahead with the planned 1 billion EUR investment. Likewise, Croatia renovates its' healthcare system by establishing a national information management system, more efficient collection and management and utilization of healthcare data through the investment period of 2021 to 2026.
In Czech, the focus is on integrated healthcare, primary care and digitalization. The country has already taken steps to ensure the adoption of digitalization by designing the legal acts, and further investment on implementing digital infrastructures is on the way.
Slovakia allocates over 75 percent of its' RRF healthcare funding to hospital network modernization. Among the plans is a new network for the treatment of atrial fibrillation in three institutes of cardiovascular diseases. Development of outpatient and inpatient care and national oncology network is underway in Hungary, supported by RFF.
Scaling-up of preventive care and outpatient care services is in particular interest from Finnish offering perspective. At the moment, the number and size of the private healthcare service providers is also growing rapidly in the CEE region providing several different entry points to the market.
Modernization of healthcare system by new clinics and hospital buildings is a major priority in several CEE healthcare systems. For instance, Romania's plan includes building or re-equipping 200 integrated medical centers in vulnerable rural and urban areas. In addition investments in screening, early diagnosis and monitoring equipment for 3000 outpatient surgeries, mainly in rural and smaller urban areas, will take place. Finland is well positioned to offer expertise in how to build and run modern cost-effective, and digital healthcare services. Finland can share knowledge on how health systems can achieve benefits from health data.
Finnish companies have positive experiences in CEE cooperation
In addition to launching the results of this comprehensive CEE RRF study, couple of leading Finnish health sector companies, namely HUR and Paree Group shared their knowledge and best practices on market-entry and internationalization.
Mr. Mika Hagberg, CEO of Paree Group presents a few extremely important key takeaways:
"When studying the market, make a research on attractiveness of export markets, preferable use Third Party specialists, check the available Finnish grants for market entry, and finally understand the decision-making processes in the entry market."
Mr. Timo Toivonen, Sales Director, CEE & MENA, HUR adds that the role of good distributors is essential. One building block to success is to work with the best available and value-adding distributors in every country. They help you to fulfil long-term cooperation goals.
In order to find out more the Finnish embassies and Business Finland offices in the CEE region welcome contacts from Finnish companies.
Do you want to read the whole report?
The comprehensive report presented at the CEE webinar, 15 June 2021, is available for Finnish companies by contacting:
Agnieszka Wrobel, Business Finland
Agnieszka.Wrobel (at) businessfinland.fi
- Read more about the business opportunities regarding EU rescue and recovery facility by visiting Team Finland Market Opportunities service.
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