History and museum committee

The hospital areas had their own committees, but the HUS executive board served as the Helsinki University Central Hospital's committee until the end of 2005.  On January 1, 2006, the Helsinki University Hospital Area and its committee and management were established in accordance with the model of our other hospital areas. The new hospital area started its practical activities on May 1, 2006.

Specialist medical care in the Helsinki metropolitan area has been developed to become more cohesive through organizational changes aimed at eliminating overlapping functions by centralization and strengthening our expertise.

Our services supporting medical care were arranged as municipal business enterprises owned by the joint authority. At the same time, the organization of support services was centralized and the scope of each business enterprise has expanded in stages to cover our entire operating region.  

Each business enterprise had its own executive board, until the Council decided in 2012 to reduce the number of executive boards of the business enterprises to two. In spring 2013, two executive boards of the business enterprises started their new council term: the board of medical care support services and the joint board of business enterprises providing so-called non-medical support services.

We acquired our laundry and textile maintenance services from Uudenmaan Sairaalapesula laundry, which started its operations as a limited liability company owned by Helsinki University Hospital already in 1992. A new property was built for the laundry in Kerava, where it moved from the Meilahti campus. In 2011, the City of Helsinki Textile Business Enterprise (Helsingin kaupungin tekstiililiikelaitos) was merged into the laundry, and the extension of the laundry building was completed in Kerava at the beginning of 2012.

Already in the 1990s, a subsidiary Kiinteistö-HYKS Oy was established in Helsinki University Hospital for the construction tasks and maintenance, servicing and facility management tasks. In connection with joining HUS, the name changed to HUS Kiinteistöt Oy. Currently, the company’s field of activities also covers security tasks and the brokerage, management and maintenance of Helsinki University Hospital’s personnel apartments.

The Museum Committee is actively surveying HUS collections, which are currently estimated to include more than 12,000 artifacts and more than 15,000 photographs.

In 2019, the Museum Committee renewed the Kellokoski Hospital Museum, surveyed the collections located in our hospitals and units, organized the National Museum Day of Health Care Museums in Kellokokoski and, together with the Arts Committee, carried out a Culture Prescription touring exhibition that tells about the work of the committees and presents picks from our collections of museum artifacts, art, and photography.

In 2020, the Museum Committee carried out a touring exhibition The Year of Nurses and Midwives 2020 (Sairaanhoitajien ja kätilöiden vuosi 2020), published the Health Preserved (Terveys tallessa) book presenting the museums and collections of the health care sector in Uusimaa, implemented the Children's Own Hospitals (Lasten omat sairaalat) exhibition at the New Children's Hospital, and invented and cataloged the collection of the Outpatient Clinic for Eye Diseases

You can follow the work of our Museum Committee on the Committee's Facebook page.

Kellokoski Hospital Museum: in the winter season, the museum is only open by appointment

Hospital Museum of Västra Nyland: The Museum is open on order. 

HUS has extensive museum collections pertaining to various hospitals and medical specialties. These collections are now being made available to the general public through Finna, which HUS joined in 2022. Finna is a joint search service for Finnish museums, libraries and archives. 

The first published material focuses on Tölö Hospital. More than 500 objects and photographs bear witness to the history of the hospital, from its founding in 1932 as the Finnish Red Cross Hospital to its later development into one of the largest trauma centers in Northern Europe. More of the collections will be published in the future.

You can also acquaint yourself with parts of the collections by visiting the Kellokoski Hospital Museum and the Västra Nyland Hospital Museum.
 

In this fact book, the lively museum dog Mutte takes the child reader on an adventurous journey through the history of children's hospital care in Finland. Through entertaining illustrations, historical photographs and interesting museum objects, the topic is explored in a child-friendly manner, but the book is also suitable for adults due to its factual content. The journey through the history of children’s hospital care begins on the floor of the Children’s Castle, from where the adventure takes off to the end of the nineteenth century and onwards to the present day. Along the way the reader finds out why Arvo Ylppö became a doctor, why the beds were taken outside at the Children's Hospital on Tehtaankatu street, and what purpose a dog in a pocket served at the Children’s Hospital’s cardiac ward. 

The book is based on the permanent exhibition The Children’s Own Hospitals, which is located in the waiting room of the Surgery and Anesthesia Unit at the New Children’s Hospital. The exhibition and the book are produced by the HUS Museum Committee. Accessible digital versions of the book are now freely available on the HUS website in English, Finnish and Swedish. The link to the English version is below, the links to the other language versions can be found at the corresponding place on the Finnish and Swedish webpages.