Jari Stenvall

Intelligent Health Policy

Generally speaking, the basic topics of organisation theories have not changed much over the decades. Finding a balance between the rational and non-rational elements of human behaviour is still a cardinal issue of modern life, society and thinking. The basic question is how to best coordinate human activities in order to make up a highly rational unit and, at the same time, maintain social integration, the normative commitments of participants and their motivation to participate. This is one of the key questions in intelligent organisations as well. Comprehensive models of organisational intelligence, which bring together relevant assumptions and concepts, are lacking in literature. For this reason, the purpose of this chapter is to present an integrative approach to organisational intelligence research. We emphasise that organisations need intelligence if they want to find ways to survive in complex environments. Our starting point is that healthcare organisations can learn from the literature on organisational intelligence. 1.1 A Quest for Well-Being The city of Hämeenlinna is a small city with 70,000 habitants near to Helsinki in Finland. Hence, it has been one of the prime movers in developing healthcare in the Nordic countries. The city has reformed its healthcare system over the last 10 years. The turning point was the insight that there was a need for a paradigm change in the healthcare system. It required service users to have a stronger position in the service system. They are more and more capable to evaluate and take responsibility for health-related issues by themselves. Hence, there are service users who need a lot of services as well. For this reason, Hämeenlinna established the so-called channel model for the most demanding service users. Technology constantly gives new possibilities in developing health services. Healthcare professionals’ attitudes, competencies and working methods should change in the new environments. Hämeenlinna has moved towards the paradigm of health intelligence. This is a comprehensive approach for developing health policy with service users and using new technological possibilities. Developing health-intelligent policy is a process. The content and methods of health policy change all the time. The city of Hämeenlinna is not alone. Many countries—like Finland, the UK and the Netherlands—have faced significant challenges that concern healthcare systems