Health Innovation in the Nordic Countries

This analysis examines public-private collaboration in the health care sector and analyses how this can be strengthened in the Nordic countries. The global health expenditures have been increasing for many decades as a consequence of ageing population, improved possibilities for treatment, better medical results and increased demand for improved health. Spending on health care for 50 years has grown by 2 percentage points in excess of GDP growth across all OECD countries. As a result, health care has become a much bigger part of most of these economies. If this development continues, health care will consume a larger proportion of the developed nations wealth, and most OECD countries will spend more than a fifth of GDP on health care in 2050. In the Nordic countries, the development poses a challenge in terms of increasing financial pressure on the health care sector. On the other side, it also implies that there is a growing global market for health care solutions for innovative companies. In the Nordic countries, health care is dominated by the public sector. Therefore, the public and the private sector are deeply interdependent if the business potential is to be exploited and the health care service improved.