Self Management of Health and Wellbeing in Rural Areas

Programme 2021 - 2027 Interreg VI-B Northern Periphery and Arctic

Date of latest update: 2025-09-24

Description

Description (EN):

The vision is to improve access to culturally sensitive and appropriate health and well-being self-management services in rural areas in the NPA region. Culturally sensitive and appropriate services refers to services that are designed and implemented with a deep respect for different cultures and their values, beliefs, and customs. These services aim to ensure that individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds are treated with fairness, dignity, and respect, while also addressing their unique needs and preferences. The project will focus on the following 3 target groups: 1) Ukrainian refugees who have arrived in Ireland since the beginning of the conflict 2) SAMI population in remote and rural settings 3) Ageing population living independently in remote, rural and isolated Icelandic areas and need to travel to access healthcare services The common thread is one of marginalisation, disconnection, disempowerment and low levels of trust and understanding.

Expected Achievements (EN):

GMC has identified & tested "Roadmap for Service Innovation" as a successful guide for digital health service implementation, which will be applied in NPA SelfCare. However, the guide does not take into account the necessary actions to establish culturally appropriate services, which is the overall objective for NPA SelfCare to develop. The WP1 specific objective is to create a foundation to develop culturally sensitive appropriate self-managed health and well-being services by: 1) Conduct a project kick-off to align plans, roles, responsibilities, risk evaluation, budget and reporting. 2) Further develop the mapping of existing distance spanning solutions. 3) Perform 5 or more interviews with each target group to identify challenges and needs, then match these with digital solutions. 4) Conduct 2 Retrospectives – 10 learnings and insights from "insight and anchoring" activities. 5) Explore the gains, build the right team, identify stakeholders and anchor, map relevant projects. WP2 specific objective is to promote idea generation in order to develop solid service models for pilot in WP3. This will involve activties such as: 1) Engaging with target groups in structured way through co-creation workshops 2) Develop methods to measuament outcomes 3) Design a flexible and iterative pilot approach in order to adapt to unforeseen circumstances 4) Build a service model design v.1 based on knowledge collected from stakeholder discussions The WP3 specific objective will be to develop and prepare 3 pilot sites (Iceland, Ireland, Sweden) and perform iterative test activities of service model and distance spanning digital solution, with real users and validate the feasibility and acceptance of the digital solution using parameters like: accessibility, basic functionality, user engagement, accuracy, repeatability, safety, security and adaptability of the digital system. Following institutions will be involved to address RCO - 14 supported to develop digital services, products and processes 1.Region Västerbotten – (Centre for Rural Medicine) 2. Iceland Health and Welfare Technology Cluster 3. Department of Occupational Medicine and Public Health in the Faroese Hospital System 4. Wellbeing services county of Lapland 5. The Health Services Executive Ireland 6. Nordic Welfare Centre

Project outputs: SelfCare transnational partnership(EN)
Gains realisation plan(EN)
Development of Pilot sites(EN)
Validated digital healthcare solutions for user groups(EN)
Strategy to secure development of culturally appropriate digital services.(EN)
Policy recommendations(EN)

Thematic information

Health and social services Rural and peripheral development

Priority: (VI-B_NPaA_1) Strengthening the innovation capacity for resilient and attractive NPA communities

Priority specific objective: RSO1.2. Reaping the benefits of digitisation for citizens, companies, research organisations and public authorities

Priority policy objective (Interreg specific objective): PO1 A more competitive and smarter Europe by promoting innovative and smart economic transformation and regional ICT connectivity

Type of intervention: 018 IT services and applications for digital skills and digital inclusion

Partners (3)

Lead Partner: Region Västerbotten

PIC (Participant Identification Code): 996375659

Partner’s ID if not PIC: SE232100022201

Department: Glesbygdsmedicinskt Centrum (Centre for Rural Medicine)

Address: Köksvägen , 90189 Umeå, Sweden

Department address: Stationsgatan , 92331 Storuman, Sweden

Legal status: public

Organisation type: Regional public authority

Website: https://www.regionvasterbotten.se/glesbygdsmedicin

Total budget: EUR 454 714.20

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 295 564.23

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 65.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 159 149.97

Heilbrigðis- og velferðartækniklasi Norðurlands

Name: Heilbrigðis- og velferðartækniklasi Norðurlands

Department: Health and Welfare

Partner’s ID if not PIC: 531119-0100

Address: Audbrekku , 640 Husavik, Iceland

Department address: Strandgata , 600 Akureyri, Iceland

Legal status: public

Organisation type: Other

Website: http://www.veltek.is

Total budget: EUR 199 929.00

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 129 953.85

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 65.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 69 975.15

University of Limerick

Name: University of Limerick

Department: School of Medicine

Partner’s ID if not PIC: IE6609370G

Address: Castletroy, V94 T9PX Castletroy, Ireland

Legal status: public

Organisation type: Higher education and research organisations

Website: https://www.ul.ie/medicine/about/staff/academic-faculty/prof-liam-glynn

Total budget: EUR 363 632.63

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 236 361.20

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 65.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 127 271.43

Partners map

Partners and Projects info

Iceland Health and Welfare Technology Cluster

Self Management of Health and Wellbeing in Rural Areas

Partners and Projects info

University of Limerick

Self Management of Health and Wellbeing in Rural Areas

Partners and Projects info

Regional Council of Västerbotten

Self Management of Health and Wellbeing in Rural Areas

Lead partner

Project partner

Summary

Project name (EN): Self Management of Health and Wellbeing in Rural Areas

Project acronym: SelfCare

Project ID: NPA0700184

Project start date: 2024-09-01

Project end date: 2027-08-31

Project status: ongoing

Relevant linked projects:

Recruit and Retain - Making it Work (EN) | Part of this initiative will touch upon the challenges of service provision of healthcare and care in extreme remoteness, where professional presence is a challenge. Understanding how physical presence of professionals can be combined with online service provision and self-care models are key to succeed. (EN), ITTS (EN) | Previous project focusing on transferring distance spanning solutions and technology solutions for improved healthcare in remote and rural regions. UL has important experiences to bring to this collaboration from earlier NPA work. (EN), iHAC - integrated Healthcare and Care - through distance spanning solutions. (EN) | Centre for Rural Medicine are leading this work on behalf of the Nordic governments. GMC's insight on how to get solutions implemented and work, what solutions that exist (we have mapped all distance spanning services in Nordic countries), environmental impact of distance spanning service provision, citizens and the professionals view from distance spanning service provision and self care, the regional development impact are all knowledge collected to go into a possible main NPA project. (EN), Healthcare and care through distance spanning solution (2018-2021), in Swedish: Vård och Omsorg På Distans (VOPD) (EN) | This initiative formed part of the Swedish presidency programme of the Nordic Council of Ministers 2018. The project focused on promoting the use of digital distance spanning solutions in healthcare and care to increase service accessibility in remote and rural regions on the Nordics. The project was very successful and continued with iHAC project, described above. (EN)

Relevant mentions and prizes:

Total budget/expenditure: EUR 1 018 275.83

Total EU funding (amount): EUR 531 925.43

Total EU funding (co-financing rate): 65.00%

Co-financing sources:

ERDF: Amount, EUR 531 925.43. Co-financing rate, 65.00%.

Investments, deliverables, policy contributions

(bullets are inserted automatically and may be incorrectly placed)

Deliverables:

Project Kick-off detailed plan - collaboration framework
Mapping existing distance spanning solutions
Suggestion to potential solution(s)
Challenges and needs
A gain realization model - exploration plan for each tentative service
Draft local/regional teams and stakeholder descriptions - for each service
Project knowledge bank - connected to different services.
Make your local team ready
Mini-web side, SoMe and visual identity
2 Newsletters
Podcast
NPA events
Learnings and insights
Learnings and insights
Co-created service model design
Service model v.1
Scenarios descriptions
Gains realisation plan
Distance spanning solution(s)
Learnings and insights
Newsletter
Podcast
Ethical Approval
Stakeholder engagement
Participant recruitment
Test feedback end users
Testing
Data analysis and reporting
Learnings and insights
Learnings and insights
Newsletter
Newsletter
Podcast
Service Innovation Roadmap
Recommendations
Final conference

Contribution to wider strategies and policies:

EUStrategyBalticSeaRegion Especially contributing to PA-Health Action 3: Increasing stakeholder and institutional capacity to tackle regional health challenges.
Our proposal include smaller stakeholder groups with low level of usage health and well-being related services.
The stakeholders group face similar challenges. A framework to secure cultural appropriate, sensitive service provision will promote equality for all and will be beneficial for citizens in participating regions and beyond.

Programme Common Output Indicator:

RCO 116 - Jointly developed solutions, Measurement unit:
RCO 084 - Pilot actions developed jointly and implemented in projects, Measurement unit:
RCO 087 - Organisations cooperating across borders, Measurement unit:
RCO 014 - Public institutions supported to develop digital services, products and processes, Measurement unit:

Delivered output indicator(s):

(RCO87) Organisations cooperating across borders: 7.0

Programme Common Result Indicator:

RCR 104 - Solutions taken up or up-scaled by organisations, Measurement unit:
RCR 011 - Users of new and upgraded public digital services, products and processes, Measurement unit:

Project part of European Union Macro-Regional or Sea Basin Strategy: EUSBSR

EUSBSR Priority (Policy) area / Horizontal action:

EUSBSR Degree of compliance:

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

Financing programme

2021 - 2027 Interreg VI-B Northern Periphery and Arctic

Last month that data in keep.eu was retrieved from the Programme's website or received from the Programme

2025-09-24

No. of projects in keep.eu / Total no. of projects (% of projects in keep.eu)

65 / 65 (100%)

No. of project partnerships in keep.eu / Total no. of project partnerships (% of project partnerships in keep.eu)

310 / 310 (100%)

Notes on the data

Languages

Contact Form

Self Management of Health and Wellbeing in Rural Areas

Description

Thematic information

Partners (3)

Partners map

Summary

Investments, deliverables, policy contributions

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

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