Department of Health and Social Management

6. EVALUATION OF THE FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND BUSINESS

6.3 Department of Health and Social Management

A SCIENTIFIC QUALITY OF RESEARCH

The Department has grouped its research into three broad topical areas:

i) Management in health and social care ii) Health economics

iii) Health and human services informatics

In addition, a new Center for Comparative Effectiveness and Patient Safety (CEPS) was begun on 1 August 2013, with four funded positions.

Health informatics, the third grouping, has a clear focus on building a useful set of research networks and research-related activities. It has collaborative relationships in place with a number of major Finnish institutions (KELA, THL) and is well-positioned to provide important support to Finnish national knowledge base and institutions in the health care system. This research grouping also has developing relationships with several international organizations including several Harvard teaching hospitals in Boston, Massachusetts, USA (Partners Health Care).

Given, in particular, this research grouping’s access to high quality patient registers and data records available in the Finnish health care system, this research group appears to have strong future prospects nationally and also as an international contributor to publications and research development. It will be further strengthened by CEPS as its work gets underway. Currently, its publication record can be assessed as “very good quality” but capable for considerable further expansion and development.

Health economics, the second grouping, has a clear focus on its research objectives. It has already made major contributions at a national level to knowledge necessary to guide and steer the Finnish health system, which is in a period of major structural re-consideration, including a study made at the request of the Prime Minister’s office. These contributions, although inside Finland and/or in Finnish, represent a major and important contribution that is expected of a nationally visible and valued research program in health economics, and should be highly valued and encouraged further by the UEF administration. Regarding publications, its recent articles have appeared in very high standard European journals, and its publication record can be assessed as “excellent quality.”

Management in health and social care, the first grouping, incorporated four different research areas: elderly care services, managing human resources, public and private management, and governance, steering and management. There is some overlap between these areas, and several groups have been successful in

bringing in substantial levels of external funding. Overall publication performance is varied among the four different groups.

In addition, there is a small grouping focused on local economies that is being discontinued in 2014 and 2015. This appears to be appropriate as this local approach to economic development does not appear to have a strong research future in this Department.

Overall assessment: Looking at the Department as a single unit, research activity and publication activities can be assessed as somewhere between “very good” and “good.” While there has been an increase since 2010 in the number of English language publications, some research groups within the Department could target more important topics and more visible journals. Ideally, it would strengthen the Department’s external image and reputation if members of the different research groups could succeed in finding topics and funding projects where several faculties in the department work together (or with members of other Social Science faculties) on broader scale, important issues that would attract substantial interest internationally.

B RESEARCH ACTIVITIES VS STRATEGY

The current research activities in most parts of the Department fit into the UEF strategic objective to be “among the leading 200 universities in the world.” The Department fits particularly well with the second Area of expertise in the UEF strategy, namely “health and well-being,” and the health informatics group links to the third objective, “new technologies and material.” Again, several members of the Department could work together across research group lines to identify and fund research projects on some of the “big” topics in the field, using Finland as a background to explore these bigger topics, as a way to boost UEF’s efforts to meet its long-term strategic goals.

C INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL RESEARCH COLLABORATION AND RESEARCHER MOBILITY

The Department overall is quite strong in this area. The Public/Private and the Health Informatics groups are both quite active in terms of international meetings and collaboration with faculty and departments in other countries such as England and the United States. The Public/Private groups’ editing of a (new) international journal from Kuopio also plays an important role in fostering international collaborative recognition for UEF.

It would be helpful for the Department’s visibility and long-term research strategy if more could be done in the area of international cooperation by some of the other research clusters. Moreover, the Department would benefit in both research and publication if various ways of funding senior international researchers could be developed to bring them to the Department for periods of residence, and if, similarly, it became possible to fund Department faculty to take semester-length leaves of absence to do research in universities in other countries.

bringing in substantial levels of external funding. Overall publication performance is varied among the four different groups.

B RESEARCH ACTIVITIES VS STRATEGY

C INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL RESEARCH COLLABORATION AND RESEARCHER MOBILITY

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D OPERATIONAL CONDITIONS

Operational conditions appeared to be good but could be improved, however.

Research staff (including professors) would appear to benefit from more systematic availability of research support for language editing, for statistical analysis, and also for project administrative support. Some doctoral students appear to need additional physical (office space), technical (for research), and additional financial support to enable them to write up their research. It would also be valuable to stimulate cross-department brownbag lunches and/or other mechanisms to allow students to hear each other, faculty, and also visiting researchers present their ongoing work.

The Department has done quite well in attracting funding, especially in parts of the Management of Health and Social Care grouping. These have included EU and well as Academy of Finland funding, as well as funding from various Finnish national ministries and regional and local government. Both the Health Economics and the Health Informatics group could improve their performance in terms of external funding sources, and could seek to achieve more prestigious and visible sources such as EU project funding. Additionally, a solid long term strategy for the Department should seek out additional sources beyond Finland that are not dependent on available (and perhaps no longer growing) financial resources of the national government.

E IMPACT OF RESEARCH

The Department’s research appears to have strong impact inside Finland in terms of the current health system policy and decision-making processes. The Health Economics group’s emphasis on the role of competition in health systems appears to be well-timed given likely future developments in the ongoing structural reforms of the Finnish health care system. The Health Informatics group’s work with KELA on a national e-prescription warehouse is an example of important work that is valuable in the Finnish national health policy context. Some sub-groups in the Management of Health and Social Care research group also appear to be visible in contributing to national health policy debates inside Finland.

In this area, more could be done by all the research groups to translate the information obtained from Finland-focused efforts into useful observations for a broader European policy audience.

F STRATEGIC VISION

The Department has worked hard over the last three years since the merger to put in place an appropriate framework that will help it to further grow and develop in the future. This framework would appear to be well-suited to the current diversity of research skills and abilities currently in the Department, and should assist in moving the research activities to the next level in the next period of years. One important dimension of this strategic vision will be to ensure, as the Department

grows in size and funding, that its vision helps it to mature into a more European as well as a Finland-focused set of research activities and publications.

NUMERIC EVALUATION

CRITERIA NUMERIC

EVALUATION SCALE 1-6

Scientific quality of research 4

International and national research collaboration and

researcher mobility 4

Operational conditions 4

Societal impact of research 3

OVERALL ASSESSMENT (not the average of the scores

above) 4