Healthcare reform: Structure and realism are the way forward
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Dansk IT has sat down with Troels Andersen to talk about Denmark’s bold new healthcare reform and its digital ambitions. As PA Consulting’s data‑and‑health specialist and a member of Dansk IT’s health IT committee, Troels explains what’s needed to turn these visions into real-world impact.
The conversation centres on how digitalisation must move from being a support function to becoming a structural enabler of reform.
“Much of what we take for granted today, many other countries have not yet achieved. Take the digital flow of information between GPs, municipal elderly care and hospitals. It may seem obvious that home care services are notified automatically when a patient is discharged and needs support at home again – but that does not happen by itself. It is the result of many years of focused effort.”
While Denmark remains among the global frontrunners in health digitalisation, Troels underlines that demographic pressure and rising numbers of chronically ill patients demand a new level of ambition.
Many of the political ambitions in the healthcare reform cannot be realised without a significant upgrade in the way we share health data. If data is to follow the individual patient across the system and support clinicians with diagnosis and treatment, what we already do well must be raised to a much higher level.”
He stresses that success depends on getting the fundamentals right:
“We need to focus on ‘all the boring stuff’ – how we organise, how we govern, and how we finance new IT systems. The structural focus of the reform reflects exactly that.”
Troels also highlights the importance of realism. Large-scale transformation requires time, energy and leadership capacity.
Major organisational changes demand enormous energy – from both employees and leadership. That must be factored in when delivering political ambitions. We have effectively set ourselves a double challenge. It is therefore encouraging to see a healthy realism around the fact that this reform is not something we will ‘just fix’. Progress needs to happen step by step.”
Finally, Troels points to the growing debate around digital public health, including the annual OffDig Health conference initiated by Dansk IT, which aims to strengthen knowledge-sharing and discussion as the reforms unfold.
Read the article in Dansk-IT in Danish.
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