Anders Tegnell talks about managing the coronavirus, data sharing and AI in Sweden

Anders Tegnell, now in hindsight, how do you rate Sweden on how we handled the Covid pandemic?

– I think Sweden as a society has made a great contribution, from individuals who have changed their lives to various companies who have found new solutions to work in completely new conditions. Many have done great work.

As you know, Sweden has chosen a different, more liberal path than many other countries during the pandemic. How can you at the Public Health Agency be sure that you have chosen the right strategy?

– We actually tried to do the same thing. Our view was that we could solve this problem by recommending and making people understand to do good things. Instead, other countries felt compelled to legislate and force people to do things. But fundamentally it was always about getting people to meet fewer people, and we quickly saw that it actually worked.

– We had early downward curves that were similar to the development in other parts of Europe, such as Belgium, Holland, Austria, etc. We did not feel that we were different from other countries as many wanted to claim. The development was also as good as could be expected under the circumstances we had.

Did all countries want the same outcome for what they did, but chose different paths to get there?

– Exactly, it's always about the fewer people you meet, the slower the spread of infection.

Some argue that if SARS-CoV-2 had mutated and become worse, our strategy would have been disadvantageous. If you had regulated more strictly, you would have had a better chance of closing down. What do you say to that?

– If you look at the development in Sweden, we got as much impact from our recommendations as most people got by force. In addition, we constantly worked on following up on the development and adding more things as we went along, and we had the same direction from day one but we messed up the details all the time. And we would have had to do that too if the virus, contrary to expectations, turned out to be worse than we initially thought.

Many companies have been able to change and work from home. How has the Public Health Agency changed?

– When the virus broke out, we at the Public Health Authority were about to move to activity-based offices. Then we told all employees that whoever could work from home should do so, which the government also urged all authorities in the country to do.

– We had good conditions for remote working from the beginning, because we had an office in Östersund and another in Solna. So we were technically well placed with regard to digital meetings and the like. We also made our press conferences digital after a while. So we changed in many ways.

If we step back from the pandemic years and look at today’s technologies and developments in medicine, how do you see AI when it comes to developing vaccines and medicines?

– It’s hard to know where this technology will end up, and AI is a topic that comes up at many meetings at FHM. We work a lot with large data sets, and the question here is whether AI can help us become better at analyzing and finding changes in these large data sets.

– Personally, I think that AI will initially take over more routine tasks, such as following trends and writing short analyses of trend changes. As a result, our employees can devote themselves to more advanced tasks, which AI – at least in our world – has not yet reached.

Many people in medicine and technology talk about the importance of good data and open data, and the ability to intertwine data from different sources, such as regions, municipalities, companies, etc. How do you think that's working?

– During the pandemic, we were able to access and collect a huge number of new data sources, from mobile operators to the number of people who moved on the Stockholm subway. So there is a lot of data and I think it will be very interesting to see how we can use it together in the future.

Are there any legal hurdles that need to be cleared first?

– Yes, especially when it comes to healthcare data and the like, but a lot of it is open data as well. The need for Sweden to improve the use of this data together has been well documented in repeated investigations. We in Sweden are good at making sure that we have a lot of data and keep it organized. We rarely have serious leaks, but we usually have good systems, so I don’t think you need to worry too much.

– But we already share a lot of data with Statistics Sweden, the Medical Products Agency, the National Board of Health and Welfare, etc. We already did this before the pandemic, but during the pandemic we were able to use it to find out which occupational groups are most affected, whether an individual's country of birth means an increased risk and much more.

In conclusion, what technological innovation could become important for the healthcare and medical sector in the coming years?

– When it comes to public health, I think it can be important to have access to more data and better data. In this way, we can achieve better analysis methods and therefore find good interventions. Above all, in terms of who should contribute and how we should contribute.

– We have very good public health in Sweden, but we also have a small group that is not developing in the same way as the vast majority. There, I think AI can help identify them and find ways to reach them.

Is it some kind of commodity from the past? That you have an image that all people are the same, but it turns out more and more with each passing year that we are completely different?

– Yes, and especially in the area of ​​public health, the Swedish initiatives have been broad-based and targeted at the entire population. We are not really used to the fact that we have a rather heterogeneous population, and that we need to allocate efforts to reach people who are not really up to date with public health developments.