THEME – WELFARE TECHNOLOGY

Denmark leads the way in welfare technology

The need for welfare technology will increase dramatically in the coming years, and Danish companies are among the most innovative in this area

By Anne Klejlsgård Hansen

Wheelchairs with built-in GPS, talking tablet dispensers and house-cleaning robots will become part of our daily living in a few years. Because as populations age across the entire western world, the proportion of working-age people is shrinking.

That makes technology ever more important, and OECD forecasts that the need for welfare technology, i.e. technology in nursing and healthcare, will increase dramatically in the coming years. It will become a major challenge in large parts of the world, but it will also create fertile ground for a technological revolution in the entire welfare area.

“The development of technology is very interesting to the whole welfare sector. Initially the technology can lighten the load for staff, improve working conditions and create more time for care. The technology can also assist people who need help to be more self-reliant for a longer time,” says the Danish Minister for the Interior and Social Affairs, Karen Ellemann, who points out that the Danish government has earmarked DKK 3 billion (EUR 403 million) for the development of new labour-saving technologies, including in the welfare area.

The welfare technology market

The export market for welfare technology in the OECD countries reached DKK 3,300 billion (EUR 444 billion) in 2006, corresponding to 7.3 per cent of total OECD exports.

In Denmark, exports of welfare technology totalled DKK 68 billion (EUR 9 billion) in 2007, corresponding to 12 per cent of total exports.

The market for welfare technology is forecast to increase rapidly in Europe, USA, Australia, China, India and Brazil, since the populations will age significantly in these countries.

Source: OECD and Region Southern Denmark

Focus on welfare technology
Many Danish companies have already discovered the booming market, and Denmark’s strengths in medico, IT and design give the country the opportunity to become one of the leading players in this area.

“Danish companies are already at an advanced stage in this area, and we see that progress is being made very rapidly – both in the research environments and in companies,” says consultant Christian Graversen, a welfare technology specialist at the Confederation of Danish Industry (DI), Denmark’s largest business organisation.

Denmark has a strong position in this business area since, like the other Scandinavian countries, it has one of the most well-developed welfare systems in the world. One of the reasons for this is that Denmark has had to adjust to demographic changes earlier than many other OECD countries, forcing politicians, companies and researchers to think in technologically new welfare solutions.

“For a number of years we have had an increasingly ageing population at the same time as having high wages. We have thus been forced to develop labour-saving technologies and that has put us in an advanced position today,” says Christian Graversen.

Part of daily life
Some of the places where welfare technology has been part of daily life for a long time are in Danish hospitals and home care. The lack of qualified labour has been increasing in these sectors for the last 10 years, and the need for additional staff in the nursing sector is forecast to increase by 7,000 by 2015 and 12,000 by 2020. The same trend is seen across the entire western world, as well as in countries such as China and India, where the pressure on the nursing sector is also expected to rise significantly.

“Welfare technology is necessary if we are to manage the workload in hospitals and home care, and the need for welfare technology will undoubtedly increase in the years to come. Welfare technology helps release labour and makes treatment more comfortable for patients and citizens,” says Lisbeth Nielsen, head of department in Danish Regions, which is responsible for the operation of Danish hospitals.

Among the many examples she mentions of how welfare technology is used today, are websites where patients suffering from e.g. heart disease or diabetes can key in their own test results and regulate medication themselves. The patient thus avoids continually having to attend the hospital, and doctors save considerable amounts of time.

Another example, which home care workers are already employing, is to use the camera in their mobile phones to take a photograph of e.g. a sore and send it directly to a doctor, who can then guide the home carer through the treatment process.

What is welfare technology?

Welfare technology is a collective term for technologies that supply citizens with welfare services by:

Increasing citizens’ safety and security Increasing citizens’ mobility

Preventing or providing early information about disease

Welfare technology can also ease the workload in the nursing sector and so reduce the need for labour.

Source: IDA

Engineers in a key role
In many cases it is engineers who are developing the new welfare technology, and at the Danish Society of Engineers (IDA), chairman Lars Bytoft is in no doubt that developments in this area will gain pace in the coming years.

“We have a labour market in Denmark where we are used to working across hierarchies and professional demarcations. This has led to major technological developments in welfare technology where nursing staff, engineers, IT people and public authorities have launched projects which have resulted in completely new welfare technology - and that we will continue to do,” says Lars Bytoft.

One of the welfare technologies that has resulted from cross-disciplinary collaboration is a high-tech Patient Briefcase from IT company Global IT Systems (GiTS) for patients suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). The Patient Briefcase has been developed through a collaboration with Region Southern Denmark and has now resulted in GiTS establishing an independent company Medisat, which exclusively focuses on welfare technology.

According to Lars Bytoft, in many cases it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel in order to develop welfare technology that can ease the workload in the nursing sector and at the same time provide better treatment.

“Often it is about rethinking existing technology to create new technology. But of course we also see some technological quantum leaps in this area,” says Lars Bytoft.

The demographic trend of rapidly ageing populations and fewer people of working age will become apparent in most OECD countries in the coming years, according to OECD surveys. In Europe today there are four people working for each pensioner, but by 2025 the ratio will have shrunk to 3:1, and by 2050 to 2:1. The same picture applies in countries such as the USA, China and India, where the populations are also ageing at record speed.

Welfare technology examples

A walking stick or wheelchair with built-in GPS
Clothes with built-in sensors that measure blood pressure and other parameters
House-cleaning robots
Talking tablet dispensers that remind the user when to take tablets
The intelligent home with e.g. automatic windows, doors and curtains
Intelligent clothes and therapy robots Software systems for alarms, sensors and contacts

Source: IDA

From IT to welfare technology by chance

It was not exactly on the cards that Global IT Systems (GiTS) should start getting involved with welfare technology. But in 2006, when one of GiTS director Kurt Christensen’s neighbours, a consultant at Svendborg Hospital told Christensen about the major challenges that the hospital’s patients suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) were experiencing, an idea began to bud in the mind of the GiTS director.

That became the start of a public-private sector collaboration between Svendborg Hospital and GiTS on a Patient Briefcase for people with COPD and the beginning of a new business unit in the GiTS Group.

“Since then it has gained ground and has resulted in the subsidiary Medisat, which exclusively supplies welfare technology solutions. We are currently developing the Patient Briefcase for other patient groups – for example those with heart disease, and we are also working on several other solutions,” says Jørgen Thomsen, head of department at Medisat, who opines that it is obvious to use competences from the IT industry to develop new welfare technology.

Discharging patients earlier
The Patient Briefcase enables those suffering from COPD, who are severely affected by a chronic lung condition, to be discharged from hospital up to a week earlier. The patient thereby escapes the confines of the hospital bed while at the same time resources are released – beds and labour – at the hospital.

The Patient Briefcase consists of two parts, one for the patient and one for the doctor. The patient’s unit is a transportable telemedical device with a screen and measuring equipment in the form of a spirometer and a pulse oximeter, while the doctor’s unit is a telemedical workstation, which enables the doctor to carry out a video consultation with the patient and retrieve patient data from the system.

“We have had very positive responses from both patients and staff, and several times we have seen that patients have become so attached to the briefcase that they don’t want to return it,” says Jørgen Thomsen, who has great expectations of the product.

The Patient Briefcase is currently being used at Svendborg Hospital and Odense University Hospital, and Medisat expects that the product will be taken into use in the whole of Region Southern Denmark during 2010.

It must be attractive too

It is not enough that it works – it must also be nice to look at.

To industrial designer Annette Krath Poulsen, the desire to invent beautiful things that make life easier for the user has always been the driving force in her work. This has already resulted in a trendily designed shopping trolley which also functions as a walker, and she is currently spending all her waking hours designing the optimal toilet for the elderly and disabled.

“It is amazingly motivating to design things that actually help ease people’s lives, and which at the same time are aesthetic,” says Annette Krath Poulsen, who owns AKP Design.

She believes that in many cases it is necessary to work across professional boundaries to develop a product that meets all the user’s requirements.

“Many of my products are a result of a cross-disciplinary collaboration – for example with nursing staff, technicians and IT and finance people – where it would not have been possible for any of us to develop the product without the others,” she says.

Danish healthcare

Medisat is a supplier to the Danish healthcare sector. The company’s vision is to modernise health services by introducing telemedical solutions.

See more on http://www.medisat.dk

Keen interest in the products
Annette Krath Poulsen has experienced keen interest in the welfare technology products she has designed, and that it is often the visual impression which determines whether the product catches on. She points out that many elderly who actually need a walker to get around, choose not to use one because they consider them awkward and impractical.

Most of Annette Krath Poulsen’s ideas emerge from situations in everyday life. The idea for the shopping trolley/walker came from observing check-out queues in supermarkets where she saw how elderly women struggled to manage a bag in one hand and a walking stick in the other. There must be a smarter solution, she thought, and the idea of the shopping trolley/walker was born. The idea for an optimal toilet for the elderly and disabled emerged from a trip to the Far East.

“During a trip to Japan I became so fascinated with their automated toilets that I thought it must be possible to further develop them so they can make everyday life easier for the elderly and disabled,” says Annette Krath Poulsen.

Shopping trolley/walker

AKP Design specialises in user-driven innovation by designing products and services for the elderly and disabled.

See more on http://www.akpdesign.dk

Rest, walk or shop. The specially designed shopping trolley also functions as a walker and a stool.
Photo: AKP Design.