UPSCALE- Unfolding the processes between user needs and health and welfare technology in socio-technical transition of health and care services

The UPSCALE project tackles the challenges of organizing future health and care services, whose sustainability is affected by population ageing and, at the same time, population decline.

There are immense expectations towards the opportunities of telemedicine and other types of health and welfare technology (hereafter HWT) in resolving these challenges.

In practice, many obstacles hinder solving the challenges with the help of technology alone, due to the systemic nature of health and care services, where both technological, structural and human factors strongly interact.

UPSCALE grabs onto this systemic nature by applying the socio-technical transitions approach to examining the organization of health and care services with the help of HWT, paying special attention to user diversity. As a result, UPSCALE produces HWT transition pathways for policymakers and other stakeholders’ use.

UPSCALE theorizes on the socio-technical transition processes to understand the role of HWT use in health and care service transition, and to examine under what conditions HWT use helps to reach broader health and care policy goals.

The particular focus is on HWT users, including citizens/patients, their informal caregivers and health and care professionals.

UPSCALE provides a broad, systemic view of health and care service transition to ensure that HWT use is meaningful with regard to the entire health and care system.

A central aim is knowledge building and co-creation during transitions – information and knowledge building and sharing within, between and beyond HWT users.

Building on the approach of socio-technical transitions and interaction between actors and structures in transitions, UPSCALE answers the following questions: (1) How do different types of HWT users’ (for example, older adults) needs, and users’ interaction with various institutional and service structures, contribute to the health and care service transition?   (2) How are information and knowledge related to HWT built, shared and co-created within, between and beyond HWT users? (3) What is the current state and future directions in our ageing societies, considering the main factors influencing the emergence of HWT use and its relations to socio-technical transitions, and what kinds of transition pathways can be formulated?

Different geographical contexts affect the current state, development and future directions of HWT use, requiring co-creation of tailored and specific transition pathways.

Socio-spatial and socio-economic perspectives may help in finding appropriate ways of contextualizing HWT-assisted systems for local communities. Overall, the research comprises both conceptual foundations with literature reviews and empirical investigation. In the empirical investigation, both qualitative and quantitative methods are utilized.

The researchers conduct interviews, a broad international survey and participatory knowledge co-creation activities with users and other stakeholders at the society level as well as country-specific local- or regional-level case studies in four European countries, Finland, The Netherlands, Sweden and Norway.

UPSCALE contributes with increased user-centred understanding about the roles, characteristics, prerequisites and impacts of HWT use in the transition of health and care services; and systemic knowledge about cross-policy and cross-sectoral collaboration in the context of HWT use.

Such knowledge stems from the novel application of socio-technical transition thinking specifically in health and care systems.

UPSCALE formulates a synthesis of socio-technical transition pathways for health and care systems and co-creates research-based policy recommendations on HWT use.

It is expected to impact academy, societal actors, local, regional, national and European policymakers, HWT users, and public and private sector actors through its future-oriented knowledge building.