Meet the partner: Andreas Lundqvist

The Centre for Rural Medicine, GMC, is a unit within Region Västerbotten that conducts research, development, and education for and in sparsely populated areas, with a focus on good, close, and equal care, Sami health, recruitment, and education. All efforts are related to the specific needs, conditions, challenges, and opportunities regarding healthcare and care in rural areas.

Region Västerbotten is the public healthcare provider in the county of Västerbotten, the second northernmost county in Sweden. The county covers 1/8 of Sweden, but only 280.000 people live there, and 80% of them live by the coast. This means that the inland and mountainous areas of Västerbotten are very sparsely populated, and the inhabitants have long distances to almost everything.

Andreas Lundqvist has worked at GMC since 2014, and is the head of unit since 2020. He has a master's degree in computing science and engineering, with extensive expertise in technology, e-health, rural health and international collaboration. 

– I want to focus on people's needs and the application of technology rather than on the technology itself, says Andreas.

How can you contribute to the NPA SelfCare Project?

– GMC has extensive experience in participating and leading international collaboration projects. We have worked closely with partners all over the world covering topics such as rural health, distance-spanning solutions, indigenous health, recruitment and retention, and education. We have just recently been appointed as a national Swedish knowledge centre for rural health, and are in the process of becoming an WHO collaborating centre, says Andreas.

Why does this partnership matter?

– Through this partnership, we are driving forward the future of digital health solutions in the North Atlantic region and beyond. The project partnership has a strong connection to remote and rural service development and will help the project to understand how to get distance-spanning services for the culturally sensitive target population implemented and used, says Andreas.

Learn more

Visit Centre for Rural Medicine's website for more information:
 https://www.regionvasterbotten.se/glesbygdsmedicin 

Follow Centre for Rural Medicine on Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/gmc-regionvasterbotten/