Nordic Digital Health & Medication Platform

Project 2020 - 2022 Closed

Establishing and operating a platform for accreditation, dissemination and activation services of quality approved digital health apps in the Nordics.

The overall objective of the Nordic Digital Health & Medication Platform project is to establish and operate a Nordic marketplace for accreditation and distribution service for digital health apps within the healthcare and the preventive care segment in the Nordic region.

The project aims to help the citizens access quality health apps through channels they can trust, increase the uptake of digital solutions for both health care and preventive care , and boost the digital health industry through the access to a Nordic wide marketplace for accredited solutions.

The Nordic Digital Health & Medication platform will make it easier for citizens and healthcare personnel to find and use quality health apps for treatment processes, preventive care and wellbeing.

The Nordic accreditation model will be based on international, national and if needed regional or local regulations for digital health apps.

The scope of the project:

Unlock the power of digital health in the Nordics for both healthcare and preventive care.
Establish and operate a Nordic wide Digital Health & Medication Platform for accreditation, dissemination and activation services for digital health apps in the Nordics, both to support the 5/5 aspiration (“Nordic Health 2030”) and to boost the Nordic healthcare industry.
Base the Nordic accreditation criteria on international, national and if needed regional/local regulations for digital health apps.

Current work going on in this phase (Fall 2020):

Develop the technical platform for health app accreditation
Establish a first version of the Nordic accreditation criteria based on the current international baselines
Build the business case for a sustainable operation for a Nordic wide service

Work planned for next phase (2021):

Start accrediting digital health apps and solutions for the Nordic market
Build a Nordic “Master Library” of approved health apps
Establish dissemination and activation services at national, regional and local level to increase the uptake and use of digital health

A step towards preventive healthcare

Digital health solutions have potentially huge transformative benefits to hard-pressed health systems. This rapidly evolving new frontier in health and care is increasingly penetrating all areas of care delivery from the initial stronghold in wellbeing and fitness to an increased array of diagnostic and treatment support solutions that span hundreds of health and care conditions and challenges.

However, research show that only 15 percent of health apps found in app stores like Google Play and Apple App Store would meet a safety or quality criteria expected by the health system, meaning our citizens are open to significant risk. In addition to which as there are no national or cross-national technical or medical accreditation of the different apps. If a citizen finds a health app they like and start using, the collected data is of little use in the existing healthcare system due to lack of standardization and interoperability.

One of the main challenges for the developer community and company innovations is that, due to the vast number of apps available, more than 85 percent of digital health solutions have less than 5000 downloads. This does not give a viable and sustainable market situation for innovations and start-ups and many apps are within a few months no longer updated or supported by their developers, although they still might be available for the public.

The Nordic Digital Health & Medication Platform will mitigate all these challenges and help create the needed awareness, accessibility, trust and governance to support and regulate a whole new segment for industry development, within both the preventive care and the healthcare sector.

Download a market report on digital health in the Nordic countries.

Background

The Nordic Digital Health Platform project is financed as part of our Health, Demography and Quality of Life program and will be a great contribution towards making the Nordic region the most sustainable and integrated health region in the world by 2030.

The project builds upon the results from the ongoing Nordic Interoperability Project previously co-financed by Nordic Innovation.