I am at present working on two R&D projects in the health care field that have an international focus. One of these is:

”Quality, patient safety and availability – a function of effectiveness in the health care sector? An international review.”

This project is a development of the international research that I have carried out in the health care field starting with “Bridge Building” (1998). “Building a network for learning in a European perspective” was published in 2005 and the latest “How can we be more efficient?” was published in 2007.

The aim of the current study is to analyze and compare management, control and organization in the health services in a number of countries as well as studying staff density, distinctness, and distribution of roles and responsibility between different professions in order to get an idea as to how such aspects can have an influence on accessibility, quality and patient safety. The selection of countries is based on WHO’s survey and ranking of the heath services in different countries of which some of those ranked highly have been chosen.

A number of developing countries, the health services of which have totally different resources than in the western world, will also be part of this international review. The question is whether there is anything to be learned from these countries.

The results will be published in a book in 2011.