Health care and health innovation

Health is highly prioritised for Småland Blekinge Halland South Sweden. Our regions are responsible for providing high qualitative health care to its citizens. Our universities have competence and research regarding health, life science and wellbeing. Linnaeus university is one of the members of the European University for wellbeing – EUniWell. Our innovation environments lead development in areas such as health innovation topics within data driven health, co-designing welfare, and eHealth.

Our regions – providing care closer to its citizens

Our regions are responsible for providing health care to its 1,3 million citizens. We use our common health platform to gather our resources and competences and jointly participate in European activities. The main aim is to learn together with other European regions and organisations on how we can develop care closer to our citizens. Challenges such as ageing population, need for digitalisation and lack of resources is something we share with other European regions. To tackle this in our regions, we have many interesting development projects such as digital records and portals, integrated care models and patient empowerment. Our belief is that we can best develop this in co-learning processes together with others. We welcome all requests for co-learning, from exchange of best practice to cooperation projects.

Innovation for data driven and digital health

Our universities have excellence in areas such as digital health and data driven care. In cooperation with health care and entrepreneurs, our innovation environments develop solutions for the future. All three actors below are part of Health Data Sweden (HDS) which has been selected as one of the four Swedish European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIH), of which HDS is the only one with a specific focus on health.

• Leap for Life is an innovation centre for information driven care – a place for the pioneers of healthcare. Leap for Life gather partners to collaborate, drive innovation and act as the driving force for change within healthcare – regionally, nationally, and internationally.
• eHealth Arena is a commitment to create a common e-health arena for businesses, health and social care, academia, and the public. eHealth Arena is managed by Region Kalmar County in close collaboration with Linnaeus University and Kalmar Science Park, local municipalities and businesses. The vision is that Region Kalmar county will become a center for e-health development, both nationally and internationally. Already today, Region Kalmar county is the home to Linnaeus university’s eHealth institute, the Swedish eHealth Agency and a strong ICT-industry. Want to learn more about the eHealth Arena? Watch this video about the eHealth Arena’s Showroom.
• Blue Science Park in Region Blekinge is a place where research meets the needs of industry and public sector. Blekinge is well known for its excellence within telecom/ICT. These competencies are now applied in health, creating new opportunities and solutions.

EUniWell – The European University for Well-Being

The European University for Well-Being, EUniWell, consists of seven European universities that have entered into a strategic university-wide collaboration. Through collaboration within high-quality education and research, the aim is to contribute to an environment for the citizens of Europe and their global neighbours that creates opportunities for good education, social responsibility, health, inclusion, and diversity – all important factors to create well-being. The other six partner universities in the European University are University of Birmingham, University of Cologne, University of Florence, University of Nantes, Leiden University, and Semmelweis University. In addition, there is a network consisting of 102 associated partners, including Region Kronoberg and Region Kalmar, as well as organizations and companies, that support the vision of EUniWell.

Cooperate with us!

We are always open for cooperation of all forms. Currently we are especially interested in cooperation in the following areas:

• Care closer to the citizen: providing care closer to the citizen and with the patient in focus means that we have to look at patient-centred, integrated, community-based, decentralised and digital care. Our regions, responsible for providing health care, are interested in exchanging experience and learning together with others within this broad area. Everything from online workshops to cooperation projects is of interest.
• eHealth-clusters: eHealth Arena is currently being established in Kalmar county. They are interested both in cluster-to-cluster cooperation within the field of eHealth, but also to exchange experience on the process of establishing clusters.
• Data driven care and AI: data provides for great opportunities for improving the health care system and the care provided to the citizens. We have strong competences within AI and good access to data. A challenge is how to use data in compliance with data protection regulations and other private integrity issues. We are interested both in developing data driven solutions, but also in exchanging knowledge on using data.