Digital healthcare drives progress and contribute to the global agendas— enabling sustainable, efficient services that save costs and reduce CO₂ emissions. It helps tackle recruitment and rentention challenges in remote and rural areas, while citizens benefit from greater accessibility and the freedom to engage with healthcare professionals on the citizens terms, “- The doctor is welcome now”. Integrated, digital care isn’t just innovation — it’s a commitment to a healthier planet and stronger communities in remote and rual areas as well as in urban counterparts.
The environment perspective
INLEDNING Digital health and care, contributing to reduced CO2 emissions
Environmental impact, synergies & tradeoffs between SDGs
What are the environmental impact, synergies & tradeoffs between SDGs when using distance spanning solutions in health care and social care?
Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), performed an Environmental Impact Assessment in 2021, on the effects of service models in healthcare and social care that that are provided with the support of distance spanning solutions.
SEI also made a synergy and trade off analysis between different Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), by applying their SDG trade off chart. This helps synergies and tradeoffs to become visible, for better and more informed decision making when updating your service model.
The publication concludes that thinking systematically and comprehensively about a policy initiative’s likely synergies and conflicts is best done via broad collaboration between people with different kinds of expertise and with cognitive tools that support systematic examination of possible interactions.
The idea of evidence-based policy development suggests that choosing strategies and compromises with a good understanding of their potential synergies and expected conflicts improves effectiveness for three key reasons:
Reduce environmental harm
Distance spanning solutions in health care and care can help reduce environmental harm – one example is that care staff spend less time driving cars. But digitalised services also generate climate impacts. The report Distance spanning solutions in health care and care – Climate impacts and sustainability synergies (2024) explores methods for measuring the consequences and evaluating how services affect sustainability in a broader perspective.
The environmental impacts of medicine robot services are presented, and a novel methodology to assess the environmental impacts is introduced. The report also presents a tool for evaluating trade-offs and synergies concerning other environmental and socio-economic factors and their contribution to the green transition.
The report concludes that distance spanning solutions could have a positive impact on CO2 emissions but transforming the healthcare sector in the Nordic countries through digitalisation requires a holistic approach that considers the environmental, social and economic dimensions.
The professionals perspective
Recruitment and retention of staff in remote and rural areas is a challenge, and outmigration of young adults are still at high level. A good working environment for professionals provides a competetive advantage to attract and retain professionals to healthcare and care services: .
Digital healthcare can make the job easier
With digital solutions we can, through a digital shift, improve the working environment for health care workers across the Nordic countries. But what does a digital shift really mean? It speaks to all the positive effects for the working environment in healthcare and care that we see in organizations where the digital transformation is really taking hold.
Through interviews of personnel, in three Nordic regions that are in the forefront of transforming their healthcare and social care service models with distance spanning technology support, it is clear that a digital shift within healthcare and care provides an opportunity to create a good working environment.
More time for what’s important
The personnel feel that their job become more easy, flexible, they have more time for what is important, it creates a greater meaning and increase the status of their job. Further, the interviewees states that they do not see themselves able to go back to work according to traditional service models.
The citizens perspective
Use of distance spanning solutions can help improving healthcare and care accessbility, but what is the citizen view? What factors needs to be taken into consideration to ensure an inclusive access to digital services?
What do the users think?
How do users feel about distance spanning solutions in health care and social care? In order to understand the user experience, a scoping review has been conducted by the Nordic research network; Health and Welfare Technology (HWT).
The findings present largely positive tendencies regarding the effects of digital solutions/distance spanning solutions for healthcare and social care on patients, clients, older adults, relatives, and professional caregivers. However, these are precisely tendencies as the dataset lacks broad scientific evidence. Although some of the studies were RCT (randomised controlled trials) studies which usually is considered to be the most reliable form of scientific evidence in the hierarchy of evidence that influences healthcare policies and practices.
The report is an important read, providing an overview of the findings from a user perspective and also recommendations for future studies and how to organise this field of research. Especially the need of academia contributing to the development of validated instruments measuring the aspects of safety and security, social participation, activities, and health.
Digital inclusion
Sammanfattande text om Nordregio-publikationen.
Voices of support – Deliver to The Global Agendas!
Bjørnar Alexander Andreassen, Helsedirektoriatet, talks about climate effects of digital services in healthcare and care during Arendalsuka 2024.