Creating a virtual Nordic university hospital platform
The Nordic University Hospital Alliance (NUHA) has a vision of becoming a unified virtual Nordic university hospital platform. The alliance aims to provide secondary and tertiary healthcare, research, education, and innovation for nearly 30 million people. If it works across borders in the Nordic region, it can be upscaled and pave the way for how European hospitals can collaborate and benefit all European patients.
From the left: Bjørn Atle Lein Bjørnbeth, Christophe Pedroletti, Runólfur Pálsson, Rasmus Møgelvang and Matti Bergendahl.
OP-ED by the CEOs of NUHAs members:
Rasmus Møgelvang, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark
Christophe Pedroletti, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden
Matti Bergendahl, Helsinki University Hospital, Helsinki, Finland
Runólfur Pálsson, Landspitali University Hospital, Reykjavik, Iceland
Bjørn Atle Lein Bjørnbeth, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
The Nordic countries have a lot in common. We share similar healthcare systems, financing and values. Perhaps the most important commonality is our commitment to offer specialist healthcare services, both secondary and tertiary, to all citizens—regardless of income or place of residence. The Nordic countries all have world-class professionals who excel in patient care, research, education and innovation.
On May 24th of last year, we signed a declaration of intent for the Nordic University Hospital Alliance (NUHA) in Copenhagen. The aim is to improve secondary and tertiary healthcare, research, education, and innovation for nearly 30 million people by creating a virtual Nordic university hospital.
At the same time, we find ourselves in a new global landscape marked by emerging geopolitical tensions that are already adversely affecting healthcare systems and supply chains across the Nordic countries, underscoring the urgent need for collaborative Nordic solutions to strengthen the region’s healthcare systems—ultimately to the benefit of the patients.
The Nordic University Hospital Alliance (NUHA) represents a strategic framework for a strong desire to contribute to a robust and sustainable healthcare system that reaches across national borders. The ambition is to strengthen the critical supply and collaboration between healthcare systems in the Nordic countries.
The Nordic region, like much of the Western world, faces similar macro trends with expanding aging population and shrinking workforce. Today’s solutions for providing healthcare are not sustainable in the long term. We need to start doing things differently.
This double demographic pressure, combined with the need for a more regenerative mindset in leading the healthcare systems, is at the core of the strategic aim in The Nordic University Hospital Alliance.
A virtual Nordic University Hospital platform
As CEOs of the university hospitals in the five Nordic capitals, we recognize the necessity of closer collaboration between our healthcare systems. The collaboration must be binding, succeeding only when it delivers tangible results for the patients and the healthcare systems in our respective countries.
By combining the significant capacities of all five healthcare systems, we can achieve much more for less. In NUHA’s first year, we built structures and workstreams within four different areas: rare diseases, platform trials, benchmarking, and future health.
Developments in modern medicine are increasing at a phenomenal pace, especially in the field of rare diseases. We can now diagnose, treat, and even cure diseases which would have been impossible just a few years ago. One of the reasons is that several of these diseases would not even have been discovered. By working together across the Nordic borders, we can even further improve our ability to diagnose and treat patients with rare diseases. We can more quickly bring new therapies to our patient population at the lowest possible cost when working together and in collaboration with the small patient groups.
Another important impact area for NUHA concerns platform trials that allow for quick adaptation of treatments and interventions, including the identification and removal of ineffective treatment options. Platform trials can ensure the meaningful, sustainable, and efficient deployment of healthcare resources across clinical areas and units.
Platform trials can be a major part of a strategy to ensure that we identify more effective treatments, work in smarter ways, and encourage innovation. Platform trials develop standardised procedures that can be applied across trials to reduce time and costs associated with the initiation of these studies. Examples are protocols, approvals, contracts, experimentation facilities, data tools and data registration and patient involvement.
Looking ahead
Cooperation at the Nordic level facilitates knowledge sharing and distribution, coordination of resources and scale in terms of patient population and robustness. Significant collaboration is already occurring with robust initiatives emerging from both the private and public sectors. However, it is apparent that further efforts are essential. Too many solutions are not scaled up and implemented because they are developed in silos instead of with holistic perspectives and a strong end-user focus.
With NUHA, we hope to balance innovation and equitable access - so that advances in screening, diagnostics, and treatment translate into real benefits for patients and healthcare systems.
If our approach works across borders in the Nordic region, it can be upscaled to the European level, benefiting all European patients and the entire European healthcare system.