Eksportrådet: Handelsaftale med Canada skaber nye muligheder
DEBAT: Canada og Danmark deler mange af de samme værdier, når det kommer til indretning af sundhedssystemet. Med handelsaftalen CETA i hus kan danske virksomheder finde vej til det canadiske sundhedsmarked, skriver Erik Landriault fra Eksportrådet i Canada.
Af Erik Yves J. Landriault
Trade Advisor (Healthcare and Life Sciences) ved Eksportrådet i Canada
As Hans Erik Henriksen, from Healthcare Denmark, mentioned in one of his articles as part of this Welfare Technology Debate, Canadians are increasingly taking note of Danish health initiatives and solutions.
As Canadians, we’ve often felt quite smug about the performance of our health system, since we often compare ourselves to the United States, which often ranks last in peer-group comparisons on a variety of measures of access, equity, and value-for-money. Much to Canada’s benefit, we’ve begun to look further afield to more systematically learn from the experiences of countries, such as Denmark, who share many of the same values.
Dansk-canadisk samarbejde
One of these recent concerted efforts, is the Canadian Advisory Panel on Healthcare Innovation, which has reached out to a variety of stakeholders in Denmark.
Part of the work of the panel is to identify promising areas of innovation in Canada and internationally that have the potential to reduce growth in health spending, while leading to improvements in the quality and accessibility of care.
Canada, like Denmark, is a hotbed of innovation; with a well-funded health innovation enterprise that includes academia, hospitals, and industry. Where Canadians have issues is in taking innovations, commercializing them and scaling them across the health system. One of the most poignant historical examples of this challenge is the story of insulin. Discovered by Drs. Banting and Best in Toronto in the 1920s, it was the business savvy Danes that commercialized and manufactured insulin throughout Scandinavia and eventually the world.
Lettere vej til det canadiske marked
In various efforts to improve Canada’s health innovation enterprise, I receive many questions about Danish experiences, which are centred on three general themes: eHealth, healthy ageing, and public-private partnerships. Interestingly, none of the queries centre on specific technologies, but rather on the organizational and systemic enablers that contribute to a vibrant health innovation system.
As such, with healthcare being the biggest category of imports from Denmark to Canada, the key to growing trade is really in bringing practical know-how of those system-level factors that ensure the adoption of technologies along with innovative products and services.
With shared values, an equally well-funded health system, and the opening up of new trade channels with the CETA agreement between Canada and Europe, Danish companies are poised to find opportunities and a receptive audience in Canada.
Konsulent: Sundhedsteknologi sikrer væksten
Dansk Erhverv: Kvalitet er borgernes eneste pejlemærke
