Research areas
Our research is based on qualitative methods to understand, develop, and drive change processes and complex interventions in the healthcare system. User involvement is a central focus and is applied systematically at individual, group, and system levels, both as a method and as an aim in its own right. The research focuses on context, relationships, and meaning, and generates knowledge that can inform practice and policy development, with a particular focus on diversity, vulnerability, and ethical perspectives.
The research is conducted in close collaboration with patients, relatives, healthcare professionals, and other key stakeholders, and contributes to the development of sustainable, meaningful, and ethically grounded healthcare services. At the same time, we work to strengthen the quality and visibility of qualitative methods and their contribution to evidence-based practice.
Strategic focus areas
Focus areas, objectives, and actions
Objectives
- Generate knowledge about user involvement in practice and the value it creates.
- Disseminate knowledge about user involvement to patients and professionals.
- Strengthen citizens’ opportunities to participate in health research.
Actions
- Conduct follow-up research on at least one research project involving user involvement.
- Initiate a project examining different forms of user involvement, such as panels, councils, workshops, co-research, and peer-to-peer approaches. The project will also explore how participation in research can be broadened to include a more diverse group of users.
- Affiliate 1–2 PhD students and supervise 1–2 master’s thesis students annually.
- Initiate a project driven by users.
Objectives
- Develop complex interventions with stakeholders, including digital and AI-based solutions.
- Integrate qualitative insights and contextual understanding in complex fields.
- Implement and evaluate interventions in clinical practice.
Actions
- Plan and conduct qualitative studies to identify needs, experiences, and context as a foundation for interventions, including users’ needs and experiences of digital solutions and AI.
- Conduct workshops and user-involving activities in which patients, relatives, and healthcare professionals actively contribute to the design and adaptation of interventions.
- Establish and strengthen collaborations with clinical environments and other relevant stakeholders to ensure practice-oriented development and testing of interventions.
- Implement at least one intervention in clinical practice and collect systematic experiences from users and healthcare professionals, focusing on how digital and AI-supported solutions affect workflows and perceived patient pathways.
Objectives
- Promote the quality of qualitative research and methodological innovation.
- Support co-creation with patients, relatives, and healthcare professionals.
- Highlight and strengthen the contribution of qualitative research to clinical practice.
Actions
- Conduct at least one follow-up research project that applies and develops (auto)ethnographic and/or compassion-focused approaches and methods, with particular attention to responsibility, vulnerability, and ethics.
- Conduct at least one participatory action research project together with users.
- Publish at least one article on advisory practice in OPEN.
- Affiliate one PhD student and supervise 1–2 master’s thesis students annually.
- Present knowledge at least one qualitative conference annually and contribute to networks, knowledge sharing, and alternative forms of dissemination.
Objectives
- Participate in strategic boards and relevant networks.
- Develop national and international research collaborations.
- Strengthen collaboration with patient associations and organisations.
Actions
- Participate in at least one advisory or strategic forum for a qualitative or user-involving research project.
- Obtain chairpersonship of at least one qualitative research network.
- Become members of at least five networks focused on qualitative research and/or user involvement.
- Develop at least one new international research collaboration, visit national and international research collaborators once annually, and initiate at least one project with international collaborators.
- Establish a collaboration with at least one patient association or organisation.