Swelife on the revised life science strategy to be presented this autumn
Sweden is a successful life science country, but international competition is fierce. Now is the opportunity to take a concerted approach to a systemic transformation in the health sector – and at the same time make Swedish life science internationally competitive.
Sweden is a successful life science country, with a strong industry, world-leading research, top-class healthcare and a relatively healthy population. But things are moving fast, and Sweden needs to make long-term and strong investments to address current challenges and remain internationally attractive and competitive.
Sweden’s current life science strategy was launched in December 2019. It is a milestone, as it sets a common direction for everyone working with health and life sciences in Sweden. The strategy, which is now being updated, aims to make Sweden a leading nation in life science, improve health and quality of life, and strengthen economic prosperity and the country’s position as a knowledge nation.
Swelife welcomes the Life Science Office at the Government Offices leading the work on the new strategy and engaging in dialogue with the health and life science ecosystem. An ecosystem where more than half a million Swedes work.
In Sweden, there are many good national and regional initiatives to strengthen life science. However, they are fragmented and involve parts of the ecosystem with no mandate to interact with other initiatives. There are also a few strong but finite projects and programmes in health and life science, of which Swelife, as a strategic innovation programme, is one.
There are proposals for desired long-term initiatives. One example is Advanced Life Science, presented by a delegation from industry and academia to the Government Offices in June. This points to the need for innovation development in industry and academia. This is an important area for Swedish competitiveness, and we hope the government will listen.
However, the experience of more than ten years of work with Swelife and more than 270 funded projects tells us that there are more challenges to address, such as implementing innovations in healthcare, managing health data and new business models for prevention and precision medicine. We have gathered our experiences, including the critical success factors that need to be in place to drive development and get results.
Link: Swelife contributes to a strong life science (in Swedish, pdf)
Health and life sciences is a complex area with sometimes conflicting objectives. Relying on what we perceive as a distributed ownership of the issue to realise the strategy is difficult. A holistic perspective is needed to increase the effectiveness of the efforts. Everyone’s responsibility risks becoming no one’s responsibility. We say: Join forces!
Our lessons from the Swelife programme show that it is indeed possible to create change. But even though Sweden has a strong tradition of collaboration, collaboration and change do not happen by themselves. A strategy is just words if there is no power behind it. Single initiatives risk only addressing parts of the whole strategy.
International competition is fierce. More nimble countries are racing past us. Just look across the Øresund. Denmark has, among other things, a focused life science strategy, organisations such as the Danish Life Science Cluster, and a tradition of private foundations. This has paid off: for example, one-fifth of Denmark’s total goods exports come from life sciences. Another example is the Netherlands, where life sciences are one of the ten priority sectors in the country’s innovation policy. Through organisations such as Health Holland, the innovation policy is implemented powerfully. It is countries similar to Sweden and they make it happen.
Sweden now has the opportunity to take a concerted approach to systemic transformation in health – while making the life science sector internationally competitive.
In our view, a strong vision linked to long-term funded initiatives, sufficient resources and partnerships is needed to make it happen for real.
This requires a strong, accountable leadership. Swelife believes that the life science office needs to be strengthened or supplemented with a function, such as a programme office or secretariat with sufficient resources in terms of expertise and money. This function could initiate strategically important projects, facilitate partnerships between different actors and drive development and implementation. We urge the government to establish this function, which would have the long-term responsibility and mandate to implement and follow up the life science strategy in a holistic way.
A long-term strengthened and competitive life science ecosystem is important for Sweden.
Eva Sjökvist Saers, Chair of Swelife
Peter Nordström, Programme Director Swelife