Treat can be tried without it turning into a project. In a pilot, we agree on a defined group and a period, roll the service out and look together at what happens. In this post I walk through what a company can expect from a pilot, what gets measured during it and what stays unchanged.
I joined Treat in June 2026 to work on operations and prepare for employer pilots. Our first pilots began at the end of August, after Treat became an ASTORI class B patient-information system that month. We are now putting the service into use with employers and learning from the pilots.
A pilot exists to measure
My background is in scaling international operations and building data-driven processes, and I spent five years in healthcare development in Silicon Valley, working on health services for consumers, employers and insurers. So I treat a pilot first and foremost as a measurement: its job is to give the employer an honest answer to whether everyday work changes when a doctor can be reached in minutes.
The scope of a pilot can be a defined group of employees, for example one site or one team, or the whole staff. The length is agreed in advance. It is worth drawing the boundary so that there are enough users for the results to say something.
Four steps
In broad terms, a pilot goes like this.
1. Scope and schedule. We agree together who the pilot covers, when it starts and how long it runs. At the same time we go through what your company in particular wants to learn from it. Your existing contracts do not need to be touched.
2. Rollout. Treat supplies ready-made communication materials for introducing the service to staff and supports the rollout throughout the pilot. No integrations or IT project are needed: employees sign in with strong electronic identification using Finnish bank credentials or Mobiilivarmenne, the mobile certificate issued by Finnish operators, and can start a chat straight away. A doctor reviews the case during service hours, every day from 08:00 to 20:00.
3. Measurement. During the pilot we follow how the service is taken up and what it leads to. What exactly is followed, I describe next.
4. Joint decision on continuing. When the pilot ends, we evaluate the results together and decide whether to continue.
What is followed during the pilot
We follow four things.
- Adoption. How quickly and how widely employees take Treat into use. This tells us whether the communication worked and whether the service was found.
- Speed of access to the right care. How quickly an employee gets a doctor's assessment and is directed to the right next step, whether that is self-care, a prescription, a sick leave certificate or follow-up care.
- Employee experience. How clear, easy and useful employees from different backgrounds find the service.
- Impact for the employer. Time and money saved, the effect on HR's daily work, absences and how smoothly care paths run.
All of this is reported to the employer in aggregated, anonymised form: volumes, timings and case categories. Small groups are suppressed from the reports. At no point does the employer see who used the service, for what reason or what the doctor decided. The patient record for every case is the responsibility of the licensed doctor who made the assessment, and Treat Health Oy processes the data on the doctor's behalf.
What stays unchanged
A pilot does not require changing a single existing contract.
- Occupational healthcare carries on as before. Treat does not replace it but works alongside it as the first step for acute complaints.
- Insurance stays as it is. Treat changes neither the cover nor its terms.
- Follow-up care contracts remain in force. When the doctor directs an employee to follow-up care, they direct them to where the employee is already entitled to go.
- Rollout needs no IT project. Treat supplies the communication materials and supports the rollout.
The doctor's notes appear in Omakanta, Finland's national patient portal, and prescriptions go to the national Prescription Centre, so the information travels with the employee to wherever they go next.
After the pilot
When the agreed period is over, we sit down and go through the results. We evaluate together whether it is worth continuing and, if so, whether to extend the service to the whole staff or to other groups. The decision is made on the pilot's own numbers.
Treat is not an emergency service. In an emergency, always call 112.
If you would like to discuss a pilot for your company, we would be glad to tell you more.