Municipalities should demand more than functionality from tomorrow's care record supplier 

By Brian Fisker, Vice President, Systematic Healthcare
The opinion piece is published on MedWatch.no

When Danish municipalities choose a new electronic care record system (known in Denmark as EPJ or EOJ), the discussion often focuses on functionality, price, and reliability. That matters, of course. But one question is becoming increasingly important:

It's a challenge many municipalities face today. 

On the one hand, municipalities want stable, joined-up solutions with clear lines of responsibility. On the other, some of the most interesting innovation comes from smaller, specialist companies that focus on a single area and can develop new solutions quickly. 

Historically, municipalities have often been forced to choose between two models: a single system from one supplier, or a patchwork of many solutions that the municipality has to connect and keep running itself. 

That's a choice municipalities shouldn't have to make. 

Freedom of choice shouldn't become an integration project 

Municipalities are under growing pressure. There are more older residents, staff are increasingly stretched, and the need for services and partners to work together keeps growing. New needs also arise faster than any single supplier can meet them. 

At the same time, municipalities increasingly want the freedom to choose the solutions that best fit their own workflows and priorities. 

The problem is that freedom of choice often comes at a price. 

If a municipality has to run integrations, security assessments, operational monitoring, and coordination across many suppliers by itself, the complexity soon eats up the gains. 

Access to APIs and integration options is the starting point. Openness also depends on who takes responsibility for how it all fits together. 

Openness requires clear responsibility 

Many suppliers today talk about open platforms and ecosystems. But an ecosystem needs more than an open door. 

There must be clear requirements for security, data processing, documentation, operations, and support. Testing and monitoring must be in place. And one party must take responsibility when something goes wrong. 

Without this structure, the freedom never materialises. Municipalities end up tied to a constant stream of new integration projects that they run, and answer for, themselves. 

Municipalities should ask for a model where the supplier keeps responsibility for the core system and for how it all works together, while specialist solutions can still be plugged in. 

For municipalities, the goal is stability and innovation at the same time. 

Cura now works alongside a competing planning tool 

At Systematic, we've chosen to work this way with Cura. 

One concrete example is our partnership with Deloitte, where municipalities can use Deloitte's automated route and shift planning solution directly alongside the Cura platform. 

What makes the partnership unusual is that Deloitte Plans is an alternative to Cura's own planning solution, Cura Plan. It competes directly with a product we sell. 

Many municipalities choose Cura Plan and get real value from it. Others need something different, and each municipality should be able to pick what fits. 

It would have been simpler to offer only our own solution. But our conversations with municipalities, and our experience from inter-municipal work on data-driven route planning, have made one thing clear: municipalities don't all want the same thing. 

Some municipalities prefer one approach, others the other. When needs differ, the options should differ too. 

This is exactly where an open ecosystem proves its worth. A municipality shouldn't be limited by its supplier's product strategy or development roadmap. If a specialist solution creates the most value, the municipality should be able to choose it without losing coherence, security, or a single point of responsibility. 

Henrik Wiingreen, Director at Deloitte, describes what he's seen from a series of operational improvement analyses in Danish municipalities: