A recent legislative change makes broader profiling of welfare-region clients possible. This opens a question two Finnish welfare regions are now asking: what would a more useful client segmentation look like if it moved beyond the standard demographic and diagnosis-based categories?

The project would explore candidate segmentation axes that are actionable for service design and pre-emptive care — for example functional capability (physical and digital) as a segmentation dimension, and how fine-grained segmentation can become before it stops being useful.

One metric raised in partner discussions is "Potential Years of Life Lost" (PYLL) as a lens for prioritising self-care support; the project could test whether it discriminates between segments in a meaningful way. In an 8-week co-creation timeframe, a team could produce: a proposed segmentation framework with two or three candidate axes; a test of that framework against sample or synthetic client data (no real personal data required at this stage); and a short assessment of which segments would most change service decisions — for instance, where pre-emptive care could be targeted differently than today.

The theme is shared across two welfare regions facing the same post-legislation question, so a framework that travels between them has more value than a single-organisation one.