The Norwegian Coordination Reform and the Role of Electronic Collaboration

Abstract

The Norwegian Government has identified electronic collaboration as an important tool to support an upcoming reform in Norwegian Health Care– the Coordination Reform. The goal of the reform is to prevent citizens from becoming patients and reduce the need for specialized care. The patients are also supposed to become more active in taking responsibility for their own health. The paper sums up the findings from a study that was done in order to get an overview of the status of electronic collaboration in the Norwegian health care sector today, and the challenges due to lack of such collaboration that can be seen in light of the coming reform. The work is based on the input from a reference group, meetings with potential users and national strategy documents. A situation analysis of eight trajectories that span primary and secondary care was performed. The main results from the work are summarized in a collaboration map. The map shows areas that need more focus in future development of collaborative ICT systems. The work shows that ICT-solutions supporting shared care and empowering the patient to a large extent are lacking. This is contradictory to the Coordination reform’s intention of empowering the patient. The situation analysis reflects the status as of April 2010.