Almedalen 2017 – an English summary

Above: Crowds of people attending Almedalen – in the background the city walls and towers of Visby.

For eight days, each political party represented in the Swedish Riksdag (Parliament), plays host consecutively. Speeches, presentations, panel debates and public meetings are interwoven with informal networking and discussions, dinner parties and bar meetings, all covered by media teams from TV and radio, by print journalists and Internet bloggers. The news from Almedalen often drowns out all other news in Sweden for the whole week.

Healthcare at Almedalen

Because the week has become so important for politicians and the news media, Almedalen also attracts many other organisations that may not be political but are affected by political decisions. Every Almedal week sees different themes vying for attention. This year Almedalsveckan.info reports that Healthcare was the second biggest subject after Sustainability, ahead of Business, Digitalisation and the Climate/Environment.

Above: Hälsodalen – Health Valley – at Almedalen 2017

Medtech4Health participated in the section of Almedalen called Health Valley (Hälsodalen). We were represented in force by Reidar Gårdebäck, Kristina Svensson and Lena Strömberg, as well as by board member Mikael Elam. There were other associates also, attending Almedalen under more than one hat.

Networking and planning

Seminars, debates and politics aside, the great draw of Almedalen is the opportunity to meet people from across Sweden – and beyond – and to network. In his Thursday reflections Reidar mentions in particular a meeting with Anne Lidgard, Vinnova’s representative in Silicon Valley. A Nordic Innovation House has been established there to serve as a first step and incubator for startups and companies that want to enter the US market. Now plans are afoot for an autumn visit in conjunction with the AdvaMed conference at the end of September. At the same time there will be Nordic companies in place preparing for Health 2.0 at the beginning of October; among them, some financed by Medtech4Health.

Medtech saves lives – are you afraid of change?

Most of the medtech events at Almedalen were conducted in Swedish. You can find reports on the Swedish language pages of this website – follow this link to Almedalen. However, our own seminar, “Medtech saves lives – are you afraid of change?” was ably hosted by Kristina in English.

Above: Seminar “Medtech saves lives – are you afraid of change?” Kristina Svensson, Jim Scheulen, Jenny Ferry and David Fredman

The speakers were Jim Scheulen (Director of Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response), David Fredman (of the Centre for Research into Cardiac Arrest and Project SMS-livräddare) and Jenny Ferry (of Innovation + in Umeå). Lena reported from the seminar that it interlocked with this year’s Almedalen discussions about the impacts and challenges of digitisation.

The three speakers presented three examples of how making changes and using medical technology can save lives. Introducing new technology is relatively easy – changing people’s attitudes is another matter in to Jim’s experience. Jenny pointed to the importance of successfully balancing leadership, with an insistence on quality and being accessible to the people affected. David’s project, SMS-livräddare, was a worthy winner of this year’s Medtech4Health Innovation Award. In his presentation David stressed that introducing a new digital smartphone application, which enables easier access to essential competencies, shows it’s not always the most technical of products that save the most lives.

Lena’s take-away idea from the seminar: Think big, act smart, start now!

(For Lena’s full report see here.)

Medtech4Health was represented at Almedalen Monday through Thursday.

For more in English about Almedalen, see this page on Wikipedia.