Here, we are doing something that truly matters.
Attendo, Finland’s largest and the Nordic region’s leading private provider of care services, operates in a highly labor-intensive sector. In Finland, the company’s 18,000 employees care for 12,000 residents across the country, and the demand for care services will not diminish as the population ages. Attendo recognized that technology could play a significant role in addressing the shortage of caregivers and in easing the everyday challenges of care work.
We are sitting at Attendo’s headquarters in Ruoholahti, Helsinki. The morning sun lights up the wall of the building across the street and our conversation partner on the other side of the table, who seems genuinely enthusiastic. He is Jukka-Pekka Luhanko, Attendo’s ICT Director, who has been driving the company’s IT development forward for nearly four years. "When I started here, the industry’s IT maturity was low. On the other hand, the situation was ideal for development – we had no legacy systems, so we were able to build everything from scratch," Luhanko recalls.
Attendo had identified the potential benefits of technology, and the company’s IT strategy is centered around the staff working in care. "Our IT development spans a very broad scale. At the same time, we are improving wireless network coverage and developing innovative solutions to support care work. A key principle is that every project must make our employees’ everyday work easier," Luhanko explains.
As part of its human-centric strategy aimed at better leveraging technology, Attendo considered how to best identify the areas of development that would truly make employees’ everyday work easier. "Who would be better at telling us what makes their work easier than the employees themselves? So we decided to go to them," Luhanko says of the insight that sparked the initiative.
The project exploring the potential of technology included Microsoft, a developer of cutting-edge solutions, and Attendo’s long-standing digital partner Efima, which brings strong expertise in leveraging AI across industries and in Microsoft’s AI capabilities. The project team prepared an ideation workshop with the care staff. "We didn’t give the caregivers any pre-set ideas for the workshop. We asked them to think of even the wildest ideas on how technology could make their everyday work easier," Luhanko explains.
The workshop discussions revealed several opportunities for leveraging technology, but one topic stood out above the rest: entries in the information system. Making entries is an extremely important task, capturing critical details about a resident’s care and daily life. At the same time, challenges were identified in the process: "Care homes are real homes for their residents, not offices. Computers are limited, and entries are often made only at the end of a shift, recalling the events of the day. This burdens our staff and takes time away from actual care work."
To make entries easier, the team began exploring technology and AI – there was no ready-made solution on the market, so Efima and Attendo decided to develop one. The idea was also that the solution should be independent of any specific care system and based on general-purpose technology. "We need to give caregivers the opportunity to focus on care itself and automate everything else. Leveraging technology could also be something that makes the entire care sector more attractive as a workplace," Luhanko reflects.
The project was carried out together with the staff of Attendo Vuoripirtti, selected as the pilot site, and Efima’s experts joined the caregivers to observe how entries were made during real everyday tasks. In addition, Attendo decided to break away from the typical technology project model, where the IT team acts as a messenger between end-users and the vendor. "IT projects fail because IT people run them. We let caregivers talk directly with Efima’s developers, and the approach worked incredibly well. At best, an issue raised was fixed during the same shift," Luhanko says enthusiastically. "This changes the way we develop software. When end-users and developers talk directly to each other, completely different results are achieved!"
The experiences from both Attendo’s end-users and Efima’s developers have been overwhelmingly positive. Luhanko describes the situation as exceptional: "Our caregivers have been able to articulate their needs, and Efima’s developers have been able to turn them into technological solutions. Rarely have I seen developers this excited about an IT solution." The project’s societal impact has also played a role in commitment. "Here, we are doing something that truly matters. It has had a tremendous effect on everyone’s motivation," Luhanko adds.
An easy-to-use AI solution enables entries to be dictated, for example, in real time via a mobile phone during a shift. Image: Attendo.
The AI solution developed in the project was deployed in spring 2025 at the pilot care home, Attendo Vuoripirtti, and has since been expanded to two additional care homes. The solution, Efima Puhekirjaus, which leverages Microsoft’s Azure AI technology, enables entries to be made verbally, for example by dictating into a mobile phone. With the solution, entries dictated by caregivers are converted into a structured format and, after the caregiver’s approval, automatically placed in the correct locations within the care information system.
The solution frees up caregivers’ time for actual care work while improving the quality of entries, which in turn raises the overall level of care. User feedback has been extremely positive – and at times even surprising. "Those who have typically been resistant to technology have been the ones looking forward to this the most," says Luhanko, continuing: "The quality of entries has also improved, as it’s easier to speak things out than to type them on a computer – and dictation is also simpler for our employees who speak a foreign language."
There is also concrete evidence of the benefits of AI. The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health became interested in the pilot and participated in studying how the use of the AI solution for entries affected caregivers’ everyday work and workload. The results were impressive: the time spent on entries dropped from as much as 45 minutes to 20 minutes, as entries could be made during the shift at suitable moments and locations. Dictation also reduced the amount of information caregivers needed to keep in mind, which lowered stress and had a positive impact on job satisfaction.
The AI solution was expanded to a third care home in the autumn, and the ultimate goal is to make it available across all of Attendo. Its ease of use also facilitates wider adoption. "We asked our caregivers what kind of instructions should be created for all Attendo homes regarding the solution’s use. They replied that they couldn’t think of anything specific to instruct. That’s how intuitive and easy to use it is," Luhanko says with a smile.
A genuine understanding of the customer’s business is one of the factors Luhanko particularly values when choosing a partner. "In a partnership, it is especially important to us that the partner understands what we do. In this project, Efima’s experts immersed themselves in the everyday life of a care home, and this had a decisive impact on the success," he notes.
Luhanko believes that the solution could benefit not only other care providers but also companies in other industries. "There is hardly any sector where AI won’t be utilized now and in the future. This solution we developed together is not just care-sector technology – it’s suitable for any context where things need to be entered," he concludes.
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