Unique collaboration for better prehospital care

“Lindholmen Science Park has extensive experience in building up this type of open arena to generate strong collaboration. It is a combination of IT and healthcare that will create unique opportunities for innovation for both the industry and healthcare. It will generate the prerequisites to meet healthcare challenges and provide even better care,” says Marika Hellqvist Greberg of the Regional Development Secretariat at Västra Götaland Region, which is financing the effort.

Prehospital ICT Arena is an open, neutral arena for innovation and knowledge-sharing in prehospital medical care. The aim is to remove the obstacles that prevent IT and eHealth from being utilized and developed to their full potential in, for example, ambulance care. eHealth entails using modern information technology in healthcare to increase the quality of care, patient safety and availability. It may involve technology used by the patient or the healthcare service for diagnosis, selection of treatment, documentation, planning or follow-ups.

“This type of cross-border cooperation is valuable to us as a national and international supplier of mobile solutions for prehospital healthcare. This means that we are able to understand the short and long-term objectives of the healthcare services and become even better at developing innovative products and solutions that correspond to the requirements of our customers,” says Carl Ekvall, President of Ortivus, one of the companies participating in the arena’s efforts.

The Prehospital ICT Arena is run by Lindholmen Science Park in a unique cooperation with some 30 organizations from the healthcare services sector, academy and industry. The arena is the result of various projects initiated in 2012.

“When we started the projects that have now resulted in the Prehospital ICT Arena, we were driven by a vision that a new form of collaboration was needed between healthcare services, industry and academy to develop the area in the best possible manner. This in turn is based on extensive experience in development work and innovation in eHealth and prehospital care,” says Bengt Arne Sjöqvist, Professor in Healthcare Informatics at Chalmers and Programme Manager for Prehospital ICT Arena.

The arena is financed by Västra Götaland Region and investments from the arena’s stakeholders.

For more information, please contact:
Bengt Arne Sjöqvist, Program Manager, Lindholmen Science Park, via e-mail: bengt.arne.sjoqvist@lindholmen.se

Simon Ungman, Press Manager, Lindholmen Science Park, Tel: +46 (0)31-764 70 21 or 
e-mail: simon.ungman@lindholmen.se