CEO's greetings

When we founded Nightingale Health ten years ago, preventative healthcare was not high on the decision-makers’ agenda. Prevention was mainly discussed in keynote speeches, while healthcare investments primarily focused on the development of disease treatment.

Already in the early days of our company, we often talked about how preventative healthcare is not an optional but a necessary change. Considering the current status of healthcare, it is evident that the change must be initiated immediately.

The continuously growing healthcare costs account for approximately 10% of GDP in many European nations and about 20% in the United States. To compare, defense expenses, for example, equal approximately 2% of GDP in Europe and about 4% in the U.S.

Massive investments have improved the quality of disease treatment, and people live longer than ever. At the same time, there has been no change in how large part of our lives we spend being sick or healthy. That is to say, we live longer but are not any healthier.

Advanced disease treatment is an excellent thing. However, the problem is the operating logic of the healthcare system which is primarily based on the idea of treating diseases reactively. This model of thinking leads to a continuous increase in the number of sick people and of years people spend being sick, as well as unmanageable costs.

Prevention is the only credible solution for building a sustainable healthcare system. There is indisputable evidence of the effectiveness of preventative measures. According to the World Health Organization, 80% of the chronic diseases that cause up to 90% of healthcare expenses can be prevented.

So, why don’t we just simply deploy preventative measures if they could help overcome one of the most significant societal challenges?

The root of the problem is that the current healthcare system lacks the tools that facilitate the efficient detection of disease risks. This refers to tools that can be scaled linearly and equitably at the level of the entire population while maintaining low costs and without straining the healthcare system.

By identifying disease risks, the healthcare system can be adjusted to allocate services preventively, effectively, and resource-efficiently to those who need them. This is the basic structure for a sustainable healthcare system and the implementation should be started immediately.

Over the past ten years, we at Nightingale Health have built a tool that enables the implementation of a national level preventative healthcare system. Our proprietary blood test detects disease risks for key chronic diseases from one sample at once. The only clinical information it requires is the patient’s age and gender; information required by the existing risk assessments, such as body mass index or blood pressure, is not needed. At the same time, the test also replaces many blood biomarkers, such as cholesterol and blood sugar, which are currently measured routinely.

Nightingale Health’s blood test only necessitates a blood sample and does not require healthcare professionals to carry out examinations or collect background information. Nevertheless, the test detects several disease risks at once with similar or better performance compared to the existing risk assessments. This enables superior scalability vis-à-vis the current risk assessments and saves a considerable amount of healthcare professionals’ time.

There is unequivocal medical evidence of the capability of Nightingale Health’s test, and the company’s datasets are the strongest in the world. Furthermore, the test’s price point is highly competitive compared to the existing routine tests, so it can replace many of them without a significant cost effect, marking a crucial step towards preventative healthcare.

In August 2023, we announced an extensive partnership with Terveystalo. Terveystalo is Finland’s largest private health care service provider, and nearly 30% of Finland’s workforce is covered by its occupational health services. As part of the partnership, Nightingale Health’s blood test will replace the routine health checks in Terveystalo’s occupational health services, launching a nationally significant journey towards preventative healthcare.

The transition towards preventative healthcare has begun and will benefit us all.

Teemu Suna
Founder, Chief Executive Officer