Busy times for Innovation Akademiska! New expanded mandate directed towards primary care

Since its beginnings almost 10 years ago, Innovation Akademiska has assessed around 250 ideas, supported the formation of more than 20 companies and helped launch about 30 new products. And lots of good things are still happening right now! Magnus Engevik, Business Developer at Uppsala BIO, recently met Dr. Johan Kaarme, Innovation Akademiska’s Executive Director, for an update of the situation.

When Innovation Akademiska started life in 2008, initially as a unit of Uppsala University Hospital and Enköping Hospital, its task was to help creative hospital employees, of which there are many, develop their ideas for new medical devices and services. Uppsala BIO was one of the catalysts behind this initiative.

A wealth of good ideas right on hand
“The original idea behind Innovation Akademiska was to utilise the wealth of good ideas found in our hospitals with the potential to improve the care situation for both staff and patients. Our aim was to get the innovators to bring their ideas to fruition”, says Johan Kaarme.

Soon afterwards, the assignment was extended to also serve as a bridge between companies and healthcare. Since 2017, Innovation Akademiska is part of the regular activities of the university hospital’s R&D department.

Clearer link between healthcare and business
“Today we have considerable breadth in our activities”, continues Johan Kaarme. “We handle ideas from staff, patients and relatives, as well as from companies. Part of our mission is to create a clearer link between healthcare and businesses by, for example, arranging expert meetings, offering a clinical test environment and helping perform usability tests.”

The aim is to make hospital care more accessible to businesses, thereby improving the availability of new medical solutions, at the same time as the healthcare sector itself can influence and specify its requirements and desires.

“But we also offer knowledge support to hospital employees, not least managers, to improve, for example, their understanding of what they can actually do (and even should do) without violating regulations. In addition, we are involved in national and international cooperation”, notes Johan.

Uppsala Region waives its rights
To help live up to its aims, Innovation Akademiska has access to the whole of Uppsala’s well-developed innovation network, as well as to national equivalents.

“One of our specialties is that we help regulate employees’ rights to their ideas in relation to their employer. This is fully in line with the ‘teacher exemption’ that university employees enjoy, something we were first in the country to offer”, adds Johan. “In brief, this means that Uppsala Region waives the rights to an idea and the purpose is, of course, to motivate employees to continue developing fresh ideas.”

Test-bed Primary Care an exciting focus area
During 2018-2019, Innovation Akademiska has a number of special focus areas, including child healthcare, the transfer of biological samples, and the creation of an ‘Innovation-made-easy’ guide for healthcare managers and innovation players.

“A really exciting initiative to look forward to is Test-bed Primary Care, which aims to develop primary care through collaboration with companies”, says Johan Kaarme.

A test-bed is a development and evaluation environment where products and services are assessed to see if they meet the needs of the testers. The testers in this case are staff, patients and even relatives who work in and visit primary care.

“The aim is to build a way of working with ideas and to implement 15 collaborations with companies during the project’s operational period (2017-2018), together with three primary care units: a public healthcare centre, a private healthcare centre and a habilitation unit in Region Uppsala”, says Johan Kaarme.

Collaboration with companies
“Together with the selected units, we will conduct a number of business partnerships. All collaborations shall be based on existing operational needs as proposed by staff, patients and related parties. These can include everything from better diagnostics to digital interpretation services and more eco-friendly plastic aprons”, notes Johan.

“We will conduct workshops together with the staff at each healthcare centre / habilitation unit to identify the specific requirements”, continues Johan. “Then we will find companies whose services / products match these needs and initiate collaborations with them. Such a collaboration can encompass anything from expert meetings lasting a couple of hours, short one-to-two-day evaluations, or longer usability tests spanning approximately one week to a couple of months.”

“We want to teach our colleagues in primary care how companies can help improve healthcare through collaboration. But also vice versa – how businesses can in the same way learn what is important for healthcare!”

Creating conditions for continuation
Johan Kaarme hopes that by spreading the results from the ‘needs’ workshops and evaluations, more people involved in primary care will benefit. “Of course, we also want to create the conditions to continue and disseminate these working methods. Our ambition is that the Test-bed Primary Care structure and culture should remain viable even after the project is concluded.”

What happens next?
Innovation Akademiska informed primary care management and relevant departments of the initiative in autumn 2017 and anchored the concept with them. It also become clear that it will cooperate with Gränby Healthcare Centre (publicly-run primary care), Aros family doctor service (privately-operated primary care) and Mobila (a publicly-run community healthcare team).

More information about the project
If you want to know more about Test-bed Primary Care, whose final report will be published in May 2019, please contact Project Manager Anna Attefall, Anna.erikson.attefall@akademiska.se, tel. 018-611 20 59.

Innovation Akademiska finances the Test-bed Primary Care project with the help of co-funding from the European Regional Development Fund via Tillväxtverket, the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth.

Read more about Innovation Akademiska.