Time is ripe for Norwegian digital healthcare in the UK

Healthcare in Norway and the UK have much in common. Both are public systems that provide value-based care to large populations. They receive major government funding, and despite an increase in private sector services, most taxpayers are committed to a universal healthcare system.

Moreover, the countries agree on this crucial point: Digitalisation is key to solving their similar healthcare challenges.

Michael Watts is an NHS doctor and the cofounder and CEO of Blüm Health Ltd. Dr Watts helps international medtech companies to evaluate and enter the UK market, especially the public sector.

As one of the most highly digitalised societies, Norway is a pioneer in digital health solutions. In addition, the Norwegian health industry has some special advantages: cutting-edge AI and life science research, innovative startups and scaleups, and strong collaboration and clusters.

So far, a few Norwegian SMEs have established themselves in the UK, and they have done so with good success. These include Sensio, a provider of fall prevention, silent nurse call system and social care technologies, and Dr. Drop-in, which combines digital healthcare services with brick-and-mortar clinical services in a patient-focused outpatient model.

Many more innovations from Norway are ready to enter the UK market. In diagnostics, Bulbitech delivers AI-powered eye-tracking technology that screens for ophthalmological and neurological disorders, while Do More Diagnostics has developed and is validating a novel method using AI in precision cancer medicine. This innovation arose from joint research at universities in Norway and the UK.

A common opportunity for innovation globally is the ageing population. Patients are living longer, and this coincides with chronic illness, leading to increased pressures on healthcare services. Dr Watts and others see the need to support these patients at home whenever possible, while also optimising their care in an acute setting.

“The areas for innovation can be broken into three phases: prevention of patients attending hospitals, reducing down their length of stay through good quality care, and ensuring they have an effective discharge to reduce their risk of readmission and subsequently supporting them in the community,” he explains.

One Norwegian SME, CheckWare, enables patients to report their own data from home, ensuring high-quality healthcare, in less time, at a lower cost. Along the same lines, Medicue allows patients to share information about their own health along the entire provider chain – from pre-appointment to post diagnosis follow-up.

When patients must stay in hospital, they benefit from digital solutions in ways they will never know. Smart Crowding, for example, provides real-time patient flow management, enabling hospital staff to make sound, data-based decisions quickly, while DeepInsight enables AI-powered scheduling of surgeries, allowing hospitals to treat more patients and improve the quality of care.

Many hospital jobs are mobile, with nurses and others walking miles a day indoors. To increase efficiency and reduce miles walked, DNV Imatis delivers a mobile e-health solution that gives hospital workers access to real-time information anywhere they are. The solution collects and aggregates data from hospital sensors and systems, putting patient data at nurses’ fingertips.

Like the UK, Norway prides itself on its world-class health research. Ledidi Core provides a platform to collectively capture and analyse data in real-time without disclosing any primary data containing sensitive information. The platform facilitates collaboration on health data and health registries, for which the Scandinavian countries are well known.

In another health trend, people are taking ownership of their health in simple but powerful ways. New mobile health apps coming out of Norway are Mia Health, which tracks a person’s activity and physical fitness over time, and CanEat, which helps people with allergies and other medical conditions to avoid eating food that could make them sick.

While Norway has some 5.5 million residents, the UK has about 67 million. Moreover, the UK’s cultural diversity is remarkable, and innovators should therefore consider how their solution can be inclusive of cultural and ethnic minorities.

“As the countries are very different in terms of scale, the Norwegian SMEs need to be prepared for a much larger and more diverse market compared to Norway,” says Jervell Lund at Innovation Norway.

She goes on to say that the NHS is an intricate labyrinth with many layers and stakeholders. Norwegian companies looking for guidance on how to gain a foothold in the UK market can find this through Innovation Norway and Watts’ company, Blüm Health.

Dr Watts agrees that the UK healthcare market presents Norwegians with a unique opportunity. “The NHS is a globally recognised public healthcare system. It provides world-class patient care and is supported by a globally recognised network of academics, research institutions and industry partner. It’s a badge of honour for any company to be working with the NHS,” he concludes.