Because we can - eHealth encounters New Public Management in Swedish Healthcare

Since November 2012 all citizens in Uppsala County in Sweden have access to their medical record on the internet sight “my health contacts”. This is the first step in a EU deployment- project where a total of 12 different eHealth services will be launched over time. The IT director of the county has engaged himself in the idea of medical records and other eHealth services since 1997 and has had several setbacks before the actual project was launched. He himself claims that the reason behind his interest to develop the service was mainly that the technique existed, inspired by the internet bank, and that it was possible, or as he puts it – because we can! In 2010 a national strategy for eHealth was launched by; the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, The Swedish Association of Health Professionals and Famna. According to the strategy eHealth services will increase the quality of care and patients involvement in the care process.
From our interviews with some of the key organizers of the service: Key authorities, professional organizations, organizers of the implementation project together with the official debate, we can detect different logics and rhetorics for and against the service, in different parts of the field. Some are in line with the NPM discourse but it is far from a perfect fit. Our aim with the paper is thus to sort out the aims behind the “eHealth reform” and hopefully give an example of what might be a new trend in the public sector.