Finnish IT media Tivi reports on Nortal’s cooperation with the Wellbeing Services County of Southwest Finland and the rollout of the Space Resource Management application at TYKS Compass Hospital and in the Salo psychiatric unit.
In the Wellbeing Services County of Southwest Finland’s new psychiatric hospital at TYKS Compass Hospital, a multi-space environment model was introduced in autumn 2024. Under this model, healthcare professionals do not have dedicated consultation rooms; instead, rooms are allocated based on the varying needs of outpatient care. This approach is based on a new method of space utilization introduced in spring 2023 at the psychiatric unit of the Salo IOT Campus. This model has proven effective in promoting more efficient use of facilities.
One common issue that leads to rooms standing empty in hospital facilities occurs when an employee works in the unit only a few days a week and has a personal room that remains unused by other staff members and patients, yet it remains vacant. As a result of the new operating model, the hospital can provide the same volume of services as before while requiring 30–40% fewer consultation rooms.
More efficient use of space helps prevent oversized premises and their costs. This approach ensures optimal space utilization for patient care, improves space efficiency, and leads to overall cost savings.
“This is a truly extensive change in our ways of working and in our culture. I would compare it to replacing a 1970s car with an electric vehicle. Moving to a multi-space environment model is not only a general development trend in Finland, but we are also seeing the same phenomenon more broadly across the Nordic countries and even internationally. For it to work, it needs a user-centric application for managing space resources, built around actual space requirements and designed to make it easy to reserve rooms,” says Marko Muukka, Project Manager for Psychiatry at TYKS.
To maximize the efficiency of the new facilities and ensure that the basic healthcare service processes function seamlessly under the latest model, the Compass Hospital and the psychiatric unit in Salo chose to adopt Nortal’s Space Resource Management application, a solution developed and tailored specifically for the social and healthcare sectors.
“Our cooperation with Nortal has been smooth, and based on the experiences in Salo, it was well justified to introduce the Space Resource Management application at Compass Hospital as well. According to user feedback, the application’s technical use is very easy. Staff in the units can easily see their room bookings and find the most suitable consultation room. Without a functioning application, managing the hospital’s facilities would be impossible,” Muukka continues.
Healthcare professionals using the facilities submit a booking request through the Space Resource Management application, after which the system prioritizes the requests and assigns rooms to users. Rooms are allocated to clinical staff based on predefined criteria derived from patient care needs, and the reserved space is reflected in both the users’ calendars and in the room-booking application.
Since the rollout, the application’s room bookings have been monitored in line with the needs and objectives of clinical work. Based on user experience, the automatic room allocation has been further refined to better meet the specific needs of the Wellbeing Services County of Southwest Finland’s psychiatric units.
“In the traditional model, where healthcare professionals have their own designated rooms, the utilization rate and efficiency of care facilities have been at a low level. At TYKS Compass Hospital and the psychiatric unit in Salo, there are in total just over 100 consultation rooms and other function-critical spaces, and their use has been optimized for approximately 180 employees,” says Mikko Lehto, VP of Government and Health at Nortal.
