Glossary

The words you'll hear when building in health, in plain language.

50 terms

A

Accelerator: A short, intense programme (usually a few months) that helps early startups grow fast, often ending with a demo day. Some take a small share of the company.
Angel investor: A private person who invests their own money in early startups, often with advice and contacts.

Bootstrapping: Building a company with your own money or early sales instead of outside investment.

Cap table: A table that shows who owns which share of a company.
CE marking: The mark showing a product meets EU rules. A medical device needs it before it can be sold in the EU.
Clinical evaluation: The process of showing, with data, that a medical device is safe and does what it claims.
Co-founder: One of the people who starts a company together and shares ownership and responsibility.
Convertible loan: A loan to a startup that turns into shares later, usually at the next funding round. Common in Finland.
Customer: The person or organisation that decides to buy. In health, this is often not the patient.

Demo day: The final event of an accelerator, where startups pitch to investors.
Dilution: When a company issues new shares, each existing owner's percentage gets smaller.
Due diligence: The checks an investor or buyer does before signing: team, numbers, legal issues, technology.

Femtech: Products and services built for women's health, such as menstrual, fertility, pregnancy and menopause care.
Findata: Finland's Social and Health Data Permit Authority. It grants permits to use health data from several sources for research and development.

GDPR: The EU data protection law. Health data is a special category and needs extra care and, usually, explicit consent.
Grant: Money you don't pay back and that doesn't cost you ownership. Usually comes with rules on how to spend it.

Incubator: A longer programme that helps very early teams turn an idea into a company, often with office space and mentoring.
Intended purpose: What the maker says a product is for. It decides whether software or a device counts as a medical device.
IP (intellectual property): Ownership of ideas and creations: patents, trademarks, designs, copyright and know-how.
ISO 13485: The international standard for quality management systems of medical device makers.

MDR: The EU Medical Device Regulation, the main rulebook for medical devices, including software, sold in the EU.
Medical device: A product or software meant to diagnose, prevent, monitor, treat or ease a disease or injury.
MVP (minimum viable product): The simplest version of a product that real users can try, so you can learn quickly.

Notified body: An independent organisation that checks higher-risk medical devices before they can get CE marking.

Occupational health care: Health care that Finnish employers provide for their employees. Prevention is required by law; many employers also include medical care.

Patent: A legal right that stops others from using your invention for a limited time, in return for publishing how it works.
Payer: Whoever actually pays for a health product or service: a hospital, a wellbeing services county, an employer, an insurer or the patient.
Pilot: A limited real-world trial with a customer, such as a hospital or employer, to test whether a product works in practice.
Pitch: A short presentation of your company to investors, partners or a jury.
Post-money valuation: What a company is worth right after new investment comes in.
Pre-money valuation: What a company is worth just before new investment comes in.
Pre-seed: The very first outside money, often for a team still testing its idea.
Prototype: An early model used to test an idea. It doesn't need to work fully.
Public procurement: The formal process public organisations must follow to buy products and services, usually through a tender.

Reimbursement: When a public payer or insurer pays back the cost of a product or treatment.
Risk class: Medical devices are sorted into classes I, IIa, IIb and III by how much harm they could cause. Higher classes need more evidence and checks.

SAFE: Simple Agreement for Future Equity: an investment that becomes shares later. Common in the US, less so in Finland.
Secondary use of health data: Using health data collected for care or statistics for another purpose, such as research or development. Regulated by its own law in Finland.
Seed: The first proper investment round, usually to build the product and find the first customers.
Series A: The round after seed, usually to grow a product that has shown real demand.
Spinout: A company created from research at a university or research institute.
Startup: A young company trying to build something new that can grow fast.

Technology transfer office (TTO): The university team that helps turn research into companies and licences, and handles IP.
Term sheet: A short document listing the main terms of an investment before the full legal contracts.

Unmet need: A real problem that existing products or services don't solve well.
User: The person who actually uses a product. In health, users, customers and payers are often different people.

Validation: Gathering evidence that your problem is real and your solution works, from interviews to pilots to clinical studies.
Venture capital (VC): Investment funds that buy shares in startups with high growth potential, expecting most to fail and a few to grow very large.

Wellbeing services county: The regional bodies that have organised public health and social services in Finland since 2023. Helsinki organises its own.