Northern Sweden’s framework for innovation in ehealth
Care-provider organisations, the business sector and academia in
Norrbotten have begun to work together in a partnership focused on the
creation of innovative and commercially viable ICT-based solutions for
healthcare and socialcare. Per-Olof Egnell, from the innovations unit
at Luleĺ University of Technology, explains how this came about.
ABSTRACT
In Norrbotten, Sweden’s northernmost county, intensive development work
has been undertaken to create an infrastructure for innovation in
healthcare-ICT solutions. Its strategic aim is to make use of the special
skills and conditions in the region to concentrate and drive the development
of needs-driven products and services in the healthcare sector for an
international market. Through close and purposeful collaboration between the
region’s business sector, its university and the healthcare sector, new
powerful solutions are being created.
Medical care in the northern part of the country faces special challenges
and conditions that are fuelling the introduction of changes and new
solutions in this sector at an appreciably higher rate than in the rest of
Sweden. No other region in the country has established the same breadth and
advanced expertise in its work to develop groundbreaking ICT-based care
solutions.
Br J Healthcare Comput Info Manage 2005; 22(10): 16–18. |
