DigitalWell Arena has strengthened the team with Sandra Eriksson and Jonas Matthing, both of whom most recently come from RISE Service Labs. They will primarily work with policy issues and build a structure for new health arenas.
When RISE chose to de-prioritize the area of service research in relation to more technical competences, RISE Service Labs was discontinued. Then Magnus Bårdén, Managing Director of DigitalWell Arena, was quick to act.
- With Sandra and Jonas, we gain deep competence and broad experience in building structures for service innovation. Their competence increases our ability to carry out practical development work based on scientific foundations. I see that both are key resources for driving processes that solve our complex societal challenges, he says.
Sandra Eriksson was unit manager for RISE Service Labs for just over five years with a focus on innovation and change in several areas. Basically, she is a design and innovation engineer.
Health arenas platform for collaboration
Sandra Eriksson also has a background in the packaging industry, an industry that is undergoing major change. There, she had the task of getting actors in different sectors and industries to collaborate and understand the power of working more needs-driven and with the user at the center to create value in new ways.
The transition from plastic to paper is a good example of the complexity of a conversion process.
- Not everything happens due to market forces, it also often requires that you work in parallel with laws or recommendations and standards, says Sandra Eriksson.
- It's a lot about behavior and how we can create the conditions for us to make good choices. In the stores, we see more and more that we shop with our own basket or case. Corona, online shopping and the cash register tax have led to a broad behavioral change. It can be directly compared to changes in the health area as well.
How DigitalWell Arena can contribute to new digital health services, she believes, is as much a question of behavior as of technology. Therefore, "health arenas" need to be created where different actors can collaborate and find structures for innovation.
- We need to find forms for new collaborations, the health arenas will be such a place. A place where we can develop new ways of working and methods, policies, data, as well as measure and understand effects on a societal level, says Sandra Eriksson.
Wants to open up the innovative power of business
Jonas Matthing has worked for 20 years with R&D projects at CTF, VINNOVA, Malmö University and RISE, several with a connection to health, and is basically an expert in markets. He was also involved in the application that landed DigitalWell Arena in Värmland.
Recently, Jonas Matthing has been working a lot on the transition to a fossil-free flight. Basically, he thinks that this work has similarities with the transformation to a more proactive and digital healthcare.
- The central thing is how to work with the movement, how to build a new market, reorganize an industry or change policies. It's basically about people making decisions - then you have to work with people's decision-making, says Jonas Matthing.
One issue in the policy work that he believes will be particularly important is to increase the acceptance of innovation from business in the public sector, especially linked to health. He thinks KRY's controversial entry into healthcare is an example of that.
- We have to work with those standards, try to pinpoint what they consist of and how they express themselves. The important thing is the quality and the result, not who carries out the interventions, and that responsibility for health care is not something that the public sector should relinquish.
