Digitalization within Health in Denmark's Largest Municipality

Digitalization within health has been through a rapid development and in political turmoil the last couple of years. In spring 2017, the municipalities of Copenhagen and Aarhus went live with a new care-system that is developed as mobile first for respectively 5,000 and 9,000 users. The new system is developed with open interfaces on international standards with large demands for excellent user experience and third-party integrations to citizen-centered solutions. This provides entirely new workflows in the municipalities, but also new challenges. This includes building a support, service- and logistics function that must support 9,000 mobile employees.

A national unrolling of telemedicine was decided in the Economy Agreement for 2016 - applicable for both regions and municipalities. That meant an expansion of a new national infrastructure that must be able to collect data in the citizens' homes and establish digital processing of the data collected so that the data can be used as decision-support across sectors - presented in dedicated systems.

A new picture of an infrastructure that opens up for new possibilities in relation to the use of data, options of early tracing of illness and treatment of complex diseases in the citizen's own home is starting to be painted. The Health Care Administration is going through a transition where patients are not consulted according to a scheduled agreement, but after their state of health.

In this Morgenbooster, Mette Harbo shared both insights and challenges in regard to digitalization in the public sector.