Our work
The MSF Sweden Innovation Unit sources, supports and drives innovations across the organization to improve access to quality healthcare for people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. To do this, we focus on three, often inter-related, topics: digital health, process innovation and planetary health.
Digital Health
Under its umbrella, digital health includes an ecosystem of digital tools, health information technologies, and patient support apps. Digital health technologies can provide promising solutions to healthcare needs and challenges in diverse contexts. These technologies should never be the end goal or replace existing healthcare systems, but they can act as a complement and help enhance healthcare services. Our work in this domain focuses primarily on the piloting of a patient support application for people living with diabetes in Lebanon.
Process Innovation
Innovations are often associated with new technical solutions and products. In reality, innovations come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes, the most efficient solution to an issue is not a tangible tool but new ways of working or the repurposing or adaptation of existing solutions to tackle new challenges. This can include exploring ways to incorporate play in paediatric care programmes, the integration of home-based care after discharge, or creative ways to convey health information to patients and their families.
In the MSF Sweden Innovation Unit, we work closely with colleagues across MSF to review and revise existing processes to improve access and quality of care for the patients we assist.
Planetary Health
The health impacts of a changing climate are already a burden for many people in the world, with many vulnerable populations and communities being disproportionally affected. As the climate emergency causes new and amplifies existing health threats, there is a need to find new ways to tackle these challenges head on.
MSF’s work in this domain is centered around three main pillars: advocacy, mitigation and adaptation. In the MSF Sweden Innovation Unit, we focus on adaptation, looking at how we as an organization can be better prepared to tackle health related challenges linked to climate change and environmental degradation on a short-, medium- and long term. MSF has a unique position as the world's leading medical humanitarian organization in the front line of the climate emergency.