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Healthcare and Care with Distance-spanning Technologies

Welfare policy, Welfare Technology

With an ageing population and with depopulation resulting in sparsely populated areas throughout the Nordic region, digitalisation and remote solutions are the new infrastructure for maintaining the Nordic welfare model. The issue, however, is how the countries of the Nordic region can make such services accessible to all citizens – regardless of where in the country they live.

In the project Healthcare and Care with Distance-spanning Technologies, the Nordic Welfare Centre has conducted a Nordic-wide survey to identify good examples of well-established digital solutions that are up and running in Nordic municipalities, county councils and regional health authorities.

The results are presented in the publication Healthcare and Care through Distance-spanning Solutions: 24 practical examples from the Nordic region.

Demand for care is increasing

Soon 25 percent of the population in the Nordic countries will be over 65 years old. This is already the case In Sweden. The fact that more people are living longer is a good thing. Some will need a lot of health and social care, while many others will remain healthy up to a very old age. Whatever their health status, people who are ageing need various kind of support.

“We in the Nordic region have been the first to address the issue of growing numbers of older people in the population and the fact that a smaller working-age population will have to provide for more and more people. Demand for municipal care services will continue to increase,” says Bengt Andersson, project manager at the Nordic Welfare Centre, adding:

“It is a smart move from several of perspectives for the Nordic region to continue to pioneer work on how our communities can deal with these demographic changes using various kinds of digital and remote solutions.”

The VOPD project was a prioritised project of the Nordic Council of Ministers within the framework of Sweden’s presidency of the council in 2018. The project was managed by the Nordic Welfare Centre and the Centre for Rural Medicine in the Swedish region of Västerbotten with support from Nordregio, and it came to an end in 2021.