Drivers of health-tech innovation in Region Skåne

Abstract: In direct comparison with other industries, technological innovations are slow to diffuse within the healthcare sector. Scholars estimate that the failure rate of implementing innovation within healthcare organizations range between 30% to 90%. This poses a question as to why the healthcare sector is lagging in the adoption of new technologies. This thesis examines the micro-, industry-level-, technological system level and macro- driving forces of technological innovations in the healthcare industry of Region Skåne during the period 2018 and forward. A case study containing semi-structured interviews was conducted on six professionals working on a regional technical innovation project in southern Sweden, namely, Sweden’s Digital Healthcare System (SDV). The case study’s findings reveal how healthcare innovations have been the creative response to positive driving forces, for instance strong top- down management, and negative driving forces, such as the COVID-19 and organizational problems. Negative transformation pressure on the micro-level, such as the burn out of healthcare workers and the administrative overload faced by healthcare workers, also played an instrumental role in driving SDV forward in promise of increased efficiency. Additionally, opportunities such as potential complementary innovations (eg. AI solutions, big data for population health control, integrating pre-existing medical technologies) drive the innovation forward. Findings reveal that the strategic decisions which managers take is paramount to innovation success, often having the ability to mold which innovational complementarities can be leveraged to help shape the trajectory of pre-existing technologies for the better.