27 May The starting point

Lots have been said about Nordic cross border patient mobility, but little has actually happened. Now it is time to act! 

At the HIMSS conference last year, in Sitges, Spain, the Nordic Delegation Meeting had the format of a round table discussion regarding sharing and using health data in the Nordics. In discussions like that, it is quite easy to agree upon a common vision of one integrated Nordic market, it is also quite easy to identify the most significant barriers as to why this is not a reality already today, and it is quite easy to come up with suggestions to how to solve this.

The report from the Nordic Delegation Meeting last year is a good example of this, a great report addressing the problems, the barriers and possible solutions of them. The challenge is that when these Nordic delegates leave that seminar room, most of them goes back to their local, regional or national agendas. Very few, if any, have in their work description that they have a responsibility to think and work Nordic!

Apart from Nordic Innovation, and some representatives of the healthcare industry, most people within this sector have more than enough focusing on local, regional and national interoperability. Areas that themselves are not fully solved yet and which makes it hard to start thinking about cross national border interoperability.

Nordic Interoperability Projects take on this is that the one thing does not exclude the other. All levels should be possible to discuss at the same time, and solutions for one level would most likely be possible to scale up or down to fit another level. Interoperability is a challenge whether it is on a local level or  a cross national level, and patients will not stop travelling abroad while we focus on solving local interoperability.

Report from the HIMSS Nordic Delegations Meeting in Sitges to be found here: https://www.himss.eu/communities/himss-nordic-community