Norwegian healthcare tech firm joins Innovation Pop Up at Leeds Teaching Hospitals to gain NHS market foothold

VAR Healthcare, which is based in Norway, has joined the Innovation Pop Up at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust to gain a foothold in the NHS market.

Ann Kristin Rotegård PhD, managing director of VAR Healthcare, said: “We have ambitions to spread out further and share best practice to support all nurses so they can give the best possible patient care.

“In old Norse mythology, Var was the goddess of wisdom – a good name for our evidence-based tool which contributes to wise and visible frontline staff.”

VAR Healthcare provides nurses and healthcare professionals with an easy-to-use digital tool to quickly access details of hundreds of clinical procedures to support safe and continuous patient care.

The system is in use in nearly all hospitals and municipalities in Norway and municipalities in Denmark besides the universities and colleges for nursing education at all levels.

VAR Healthcare is also being adopted across Germany, Austria and Switzerland as a preferred tool in the digitalisation strategy of the healthcare sector.

Ms Rotegård is a former nurse who has become one of Norway’s leading authorities on nursing science. She is the chair of nursing informatics at the International Medical Informatics Association.

She said: “We have a wonderful collaboration with the Innovation Pop Up in Leeds which is opening doors for us in the UK.

“In the future, we would like to open a UK office and create jobs for experienced local nurses to help us grow further.”

VAR Healthcare offers an intelligent search engine with knowledge and decision support, a database of 450 regularly updated, evidence-based procedures with helpful summaries, illustrations and animations, knowledge tests and calculators.

It aims to help frontline staff make rapid and qualified decisions, speed up access to the latest best practice and improve documentation, nurse satisfaction, lifelong learning and patient outcomes.

VAR Healthcare can also be integrated with quality management and electronic patient record systems and is suitable for use on mobiles, tablets, PCs and Macs.

The company is commencing a pilot scheme with staff at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust to gather feedback from nurses on the technology, language, terms and content, which it is adapting for the UK market with the support of the Innovation Pop Up.

Based in the old Gilbert Scott building, the centre provides access to clinical teams, tailored business support and resources and open-plan workspace for its growing community of members.

Professor David Brettle, chief scientific officer at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and founder of the Innovation Pop Up, said: “We are delighted to be helping VAR Healthcare build a presence in the UK.

“Leeds represents one of Europe’s largest medical, academic and industrial establishments and has a supportive ecosystem for health tech companies like VAR Healthcare.

“It is the ideal environment for scaling up innovations in healthcare.”

The trust launched the Innovation Pop Up to bring together entrepreneurs, researchers and clinicians to create, evaluate and adopt new products and services to transform health and social care and drive economic growth.

Since its launch in September 2021, the Pop Up has worked with 150 companies, identified 30 collaborations and ten funding opportunities.

Firm's role in pimary care

VAR Healthcare was founded in 2002 as a project to digitise a handbook for nurses. It proved popular with hospitals, universities and providers in primary care in Norway.

The Norwegian publishing house Cappelen Damm acquired VAR Healthcare in 2012 and has helped to develop the product and expand into new markets.

The system makes use of global standards and research findings and is adapted to meet the health legislation and guidelines within individual countries.

The Innovation Pop Up has engaged with clinicians and entrepreneurs across Israel, Spain, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and the USA.