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In its recent report, Sitra proposes that proactive healthcare and social welfare should be established as a policy goal. A clear timeline should also be set for this transition. A target year could be 2035, by which time Finland would allocate 30 per cent of its healthcare and social welfare budget to proactive activities. Currently, only one per cent is earmarked for promoting well-being and health through the funding model for healthcare and social welfare.
Proactive healthcare and social welfare benefits people through improved services. It uses data, artificial intelligence (AI), and predictive methods to identify health and well-being problems before they arise. It produces individualised, data-driven solutions that help deliver services in a timely, impactful, and efficient manner.
Transitioning to proactive healthcare and social welfare services would also offer the opportunity to better manage costs by addressing problems before they worsen.
According to Sitra’s Senior Lead, Petri Lehto, Finland is in an excellent position to be a pioneer in proactive healthcare and social welfare.
“Finland now has a fantastic opportunity to shift the focus of healthcare and social welfare services from corrective actions towards prevention. We have extensive health data reserves, integrated healthcare and social welfare service structures, strong AI expertise, and additionally, pharmacogenetics, where medication choices take into account an individual’s genetic makeup,” Lehto says.
International examples are encouraging
Proactive healthcare and social welfare can prevent diseases and provide better, more personalised care. Health risk factors can be identified well in advance. For instance, artificial intelligence can help assess when and what kind of service is needed and can provide action prompts. People do not have to queue for services; instead, services are offered based on verified need. The work of healthcare and social welfare professionals, in turn, focuses on the holistic well-being of clients when AI handles routine tasks.
Riitta Aejmelaeus, Development Director at the Ministry of Finance, says that proactive healthcare and social welfare is needed to achieve the desired impacts on the population’s well-being and functional capacity.
“The direction is, in any case, towards prevention and increasingly personalised care. It is good that Sitra is advancing this work in Finland,” says Aejmelaeus. She was a member of the advisory group supporting the preparation of the report.
International examples show that proactive methods prevent diseases and enhance resource efficiency. For example, in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Estonia, they have enabled citizens to participate more actively in maintaining their health.
Towards proactive healthcare and social welfare through shared guidelines and experiments
Proactive healthcare and social welfare has been identified as a crucial goal in national visions. However, political and economic governance does not always support this objective.
“Transitioning to proactive measures requires extensive actions among healthcare and social welfare actors. To initiate this change, it is important to renew national policy guidelines while simultaneously launching experiments in wellbeing services counties in Finland”, Lehto summarises.
The report presents concrete measures to promote proactive healthcare and social welfare in Finland.
For example, legislation should be updated to allow the broad use of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, in healthcare and social welfare services. The healthcare and social welfare funding model should be developed to encourage the maintenance of health and well-being. The adoption of new methods and practices requires experiments in wellbeing services counties, as well as collaboration with companies. Evidence of the effectiveness of new solutions also supports the growth of companies in the health technology sector.
Funding call open for wellbeing services counties in Finland
Sitra has opened a funding call (in Finnish, summary in English) for experiments in proactive healthcare and social welfare methods. The aim is to accelerate the adoption of proactive methods. The call is targeted at wellbeing services counties in Finland and is open until 17 April 2025 at 12:00 noon (+3 UTC).
