Finland’s first private cancer and radiotherapy clinic to be set up in Helsinki
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Finland's first private clinic to specialise in cancer and radiotherapy is to be set up in Helsinki.
The services offered by the clinic will include radiotherapy, chemotherapy, diagnostics, and follow-up by specialist doctors. At present, cancer treatments are almost exclusively offered by the public health sector. There is not a single private radiotherapy clinic in Finland.
The clinic's owner, Docrates Oy, intends to outsource surgical treatments, laboratory services, and hospital bed services. These services, however, will be offered in the same building.
At first, the clinic will concentrate on treating the most common forms of cancer, such as breast and prostate cancer. Gradually the offered services will include radiotherapy and medical treatments of all types of cancer.
The aim is to treat 900 patients per year. At the Helsinki University Central Hospital (HYKS), 300 people receive radiotherapy each day.
The clinic is meant to operate in a new building that is to be built in Saukonpaasi between the Jätkänsaari and Ruoholahti districts to the west of the city (see map). Helsinki City Real Estate Department will process the building site application on the 15th of May. Docrates Oy will not be the owner of the building. Instead, the real estate investor is Nordea Life Insurance Finland.
The building is expected to be completed by the end of next year, and the first patients should be received at the beginning of 2009.
The specialist doctor services Docrates is planning to launch already this autumn, somewhere else in Helsinki. The principal owners of Docrates Oy are Master of Arts Pekka Aalto, Docent of Clinical Ontology Timo Joensuu, and Master of Arts Harri Puurunen.
Of these, Aalto has previously set up a company specialising in designing radiotherapy dosage software. Puurunen, in turn, is a managing director, who has worked, among other things, as a financial director with TEKES – the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. Joensuu holds a position as a specialist doctor at the HYKS cancer clinic, where he has 14 years of work experience.
"The demand is on the increase as the population ages. Waiting times for radiotherapy at HYKS are already getting longer. There are people who would be willing to pay for private treatment", Joensuu explains.
By the year 2011, the clinic is expected to employ around 40 people and the entire centre in the region of 300.
To finance the undertaking, Docrates has created an issue of shares aimed at private investors. This has already borne fruit. Next year capital investors will be sought.
According to Puurunen, the company is also holding leasing negotiations on various expensive treatment equipment, such as the radiotherapy hardware.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 10.5.2007 - TODAY |
 Finland’s first private cancer and radiotherapy clinic to be set up in Helsinki
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