In 2018, Compare and Värmland won the Vinnväxt competition for the DigitalWell Arena initiative. A 10-year funding granted by Vinnova with the aim of building a nationally and internationally competitive innovation environment around digital health services.
Winnväxt is a competition where regions can receive long-term funding to build competitive innovation environments with the conditions to achieve international success.
DigitalWell Arena has the ambition to establish Värmland as a region where the initiative forms a growth-creating ecosystem for user-driven innovation of digital welfare services. Through individually adapted, cost-effective and accessible solutions, health is created for everyone. The investment is well in line with the region's strategy for smart specialization. The area is of great importance to the region's economy, its continued development and growth is crucial for the region's future attractiveness and competitiveness. Behind the application is strong regional leadership and anchoring in all parts of the triple helix, which gives credibility to a strong ownership in the region even after the Winnväxt financing ends.
Furthermore, the application addresses a clear regional area of strength and a unique position in Sweden within service research. This, in combination with a strong constellation of actors with relevant competence for the investment, gives credibility in the ability to succeed in realizing the high ambitions that are displayed. The fact that the established Compare cluster and its broad network of companies in IT/digitalization is the coordinator of the investment further strengthens the credibility for growth and the business perspective linked to the digitized welfare services that are the focus of the application.
In order for digitization to be able to renew welfare production in the comprehensive way depicted in the application, a clear focus is required on the public actors' ability to change and innovate. The application addresses this in a credible way and reinforces the image that there are conditions to reach the set goals. Furthermore, a good connection is shown nationally. In this context, the collaboration across seven regions around ExperioLab constitutes a broadened base of competences and at the same time a good basis for the spread of different solutions. Vinnova's assessment is that such a broad base of regions is important to continue developing, both to create a market for commercial solutions, e.g. through joint innovation-promoting procurements and to have an impact on policy issues.
Read more about Vinnväxt and other investments in Sweden on Vinnova's website.
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The regional project DigitalWell is financed by the European Union - European Regional Development Fund. The purpose of DigitalWell is that we will together develop digital solutions for needs in welfare with the user's own abilities in focus.
