Following the developments surrounding the Millennium electronic health record system, both Region Skåne and Region Västra Götaland are facing new choices about the future of their digital healthcare infrastructure. The University of Gothenburg is now entering into long-term research collaborations with the two regions, with the aim of both supporting the transition and building knowledge that can benefit other regions.
The collaborations are brought together within the Alliance for Regional Healthcare Infrastructure (ARV), led by Tomas Lindroth at the Department of Applied Information Technology and as part of the Swedish Center for Digital Innovation (SCDI).
Both Region Skåne and Region Västra Götaland find themselves in a new situation following the abandonment of previous plans involving the Millennium electronic health record system. The regions now need to chart new paths forward for their healthcare information environments. This comes at a time when the needs of healthcare, technological developments and Sweden’s national digital infrastructure are all changing rapidly.
ARV will bring together research and regional development efforts to generate knowledge about how this transition can be carried out in a sustainable way over the long term.
“This is a much broader issue than which electronic health record system a region should choose. It is about how to build the capacity to gradually develop and renew critical digital infrastructure over many years,” says Tomas Lindroth.
The researchers will work closely with the regions’ ongoing development efforts, studying issues including technology strategy, governance, organisation, architecture, relations with the vendor market, and interaction with other regions and national actors.
In Region Västra Götaland, the starting point is the region’s decision to move towards a modular healthcare information environment, in which individual components can gradually be developed and replaced rather than building the entire environment around a single core system. The region itself describes the transition primarily as an organisational undertaking rather than a technology project, requiring shared principles, standardisation, governance and coordination.
The research collaboration with Region Västra Götaland and Region Skåne will therefore involve more than retrospective studies. The researchers will follow ongoing initiatives and meeting structures, conduct interviews and analyses, and serve as research-based sounding boards as strategic choices are made.
Another important idea behind ARV is to facilitate learning across regions. Many of the fundamental challenges are shared, even though the organisational, technological and financial circumstances differ.
“We want to get close to the work as it actually happens. The role of research is not only to describe afterwards what went well or badly, but to contribute concepts, comparisons and knowledge while important choices can still be influenced. At the same time, this gives us a unique opportunity to scientifically study one of the most significant transformations of Sweden’s digital healthcare infrastructure in many years,” says Tomas Lindroth.
In the longer term, the ambition is for ARV to develop into a knowledge hub for regional healthcare infrastructure, enabling experiences to be shared among more regions and providing a meeting point for research, practice and national-level development.
ARV is led by Tomas Lindroth at the Department of Applied Information Technology, University of Gothenburg, within the Digital Government Research Consortium and the Swedish Center for Digital Innovation (SCDI). Professor Johan Magnusson and Leman Isik, PhD, are also involved in the work.