Given the pace of scientific and technological advancements, Sweden, one of the early adopters of digital, is well-positioned to leverage the opportunities of the transformation that we’re seeing around the world.
But as Daniel Forslund [pictured on the right], chairman of the Stockholm region’s innovation and development committee, explains, it’s not all that simple.
Stockholm, the country’s capital and largest city, is now making it mandatory for healthcare providers to offer digital services in an effort to tackle the gap between the expectations of consumers and the reality.
Ahead of HIMSS20, MobiHealthNews caught up with Forslund to talk about their plans.
Want to publish your own articles on DistilINFO Publications?
Send us an email, we will get in touch with you.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MobiHealthNews: You are currently chairman of the innovation and development committee in the region of Stockholm. In 2014, you made the move to politics and were elected commissioner for innovation and eHealth, with responsibility for the policies, investments and initiatives relating to this area. What can you tell our readers about these roles and your work to digitise services and bring innovation into healthcare?
Daniel Forslund: That area has been my passion for many years, because I was working as a civil servant at the national level for many years with these kind of aspects. So I felt that I needed to [generate] even more change and also move to the regional level and move into politics because I felt that there were too few decision makers actually focusing on innovation and digitalisation.
I could also see that there was a slow uptake of new innovative solutions in healthcare, due to the lack of leadership from the regional politicians and decision-makers. So then I decided to be one myself. So, that’s the background, because I was focusing on the national policies and legislation beforehand, but those national policies were not worth anything if the regional level didn’t take very well to drive change and work harder [to overcome] the obstacles for innovation on the local and regional level.
That’s what I’m now focusing on very much in my role as chairman of the innovation and development committee, providing support for innovative solutions. We have an internal innovation fund where we can fund projects and help health professionals to improve their own healthcare organisation for example with new smart digital tools or new innovative ways of working or new treatment or working methods. We’ve been doing lots in building an innovation organisation to help both health professionals and managers who are in healthcare so that they can get the support and, well, development work in different ways, and also help them to collaborate with entrepreneurs or companies or researchers and academia to help us solve challenges and problems within our organisation.
We have also decided to set a new set of policies and regional regulations on how innovation should be driven within our hospitals and primary care centers and also within our administration. We now have a governing policy that says that innovation should be seen as a core part of how you both govern the county council and how you manage your daily life in healthcare. But innovation should always be a part of that. And that’s a requirement for our care providers to also work with.
MobiHealthNews: From what you say, it seems that your work spans across the entire digital health ecosystem, you mentioned startups, academia and many others. Could you give us an overview of some of the initiatives that are driving this agenda forward?
Source: MobiHealth News
