Personalized health services (PERSONFORSK)

At PERSONFORSK, we research innovation and personalization of health services toward optimal understanding, user participation and effectiveness. We approach health service research from a human-centered, relational, and data-driven perspective.

Health service consumption involves human beings meeting with professionals to receive help with a health concern. Successful health service consumption leads to improved individual health and overall quality of life. Success is contingent on whether the individual’s health issue and health context are sufficiently understood. Quality understanding emerges when patients and professionals safely and effectively communicate about health and needs in relational as well as technology-supported processes.

PERSONFORSK is built on a foundational tenet: Health service research should contribute to dismantling the artificial divide between mental and physical health, engaging the whole person throughout their healthcare journey. By 'the whole person,' we mean considering the aspects that contribute to illness or health problems, as well as those that contribute to their overall health and resources.

Every individual receiving healthcare services exists within a dynamic balance of both. Sustainable health services invite and involve resources and the concerns of the individual patient to participate and contribute to treatment processes.

Therefore, PERSONFORSK has a special focus on developing and implementing projects that study how the treatment relationship/collaborative process between a healthcare provider and a patient contribute to personalization, quality, utility, and/or the effectiveness of the treatment. Additionally, PERSONFORSK develops technologies and research projects to innovate personalized health data collection from the patient to guide treatment decisions and process toward precision.

PERSONFORSK is committed to employing advanced mixed methods in our research. We integrate diverse research approaches to deepen our understanding, particularly within participatory action research structures, in committed collaboration with practice. Our methodology involves using qualitative in-depth methods either independently or in conjunction with advanced quantitative methods, ensuring reliable data interpretations for each individual patient.

Members of the research group teach and supervise in the PhD program Health, Function and Participation, as well as in the Master in Interaction and Public Health, Master in Clinical Physiotherapy, and Master's programs in nursing.