To protect the future of healthcare, we need to be data-driven

At the LSX Nordics Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark Bogi Eliasen, director of health at the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, described some of the pressures healthcare is facing and said “30% of the chronic disease burden in our sector is avoidable if we applied the right data [and] technology.”

While Eliasen concluded these challenges “are not specifically Nordic [as] they are global”, he also explained how healthcare should be seen as an investment “and not a cost.”

Eliasen posed the following question to delegates: “Do we want the best health system or the healthiest population?” He stated that everyone would say they would rather have the healthiest population but work towards having the best health system instead.

To try and ease this burden, he urged those listening to think about how we can “make healthcare bring value to society” and explained that it is “data-driven” and “also about looking at what is not sexy; the stuff that does not get the glimmer or the Nobel Prize.”

Diana Arsovic, CEO of the Danish Life Science Cluster, underscored the importance of shared risk through collaboration. She advocated for a mission-oriented approach to drive innovation, involving identifying challenges, setting goals, working together, adopting new methods, and taking risks. “The better data we have, the better solutions we can come up with,” she stated.

Troels Bierman Mortensen, CEO and founder of health data platform company DataFair, echoed this sentiment, emphasizing the value of high-quality health data in the region. “This part of the world has access to really great health data—we have a good starting point, and we talk about it,” he said. However, he cautioned, “talking about data is not enough to get us to use it. We need to innovate, experiment, take risks, and share risk.”

Frederik Knud, Healthcare Partnership Director at Novartis, highlighted another barrier: the Nordics’ decentralized approach to decision-making, which complicates scaling up. Mortensen pointed to a further challenge—a “clear bias” toward collaboration with the private sector. Kenneth Forsstrom Jensen, Health Data Lead at Roche, reinforced the call for unity, stating, “We need to come together in the Nordics.”

The topic of moving from “healthcare to health” has been discussed elsewhere and was the focus of Abu Dhabi Global Healthcare Week in May. Panelists at the event collectively agreed that the goal of shifting the current outlook and approach to the healthcare space is one that cannot be done alone and put forward that the movement will be built on partnerships and the bringing together of different stakeholders.