Welcome to my homepage!

I am associate professor in health economics with the Social Medicine and Global Health (SMGH) research group at the Department of Clinical Sciences, Malmö at Lund University in Sweden. My research interests are primarily concerned with the performance of health care systems and the extent to which such systems deliver high quality care to those who need health care in an effective, efficient, and equitable manner (Hint: sometimes they do...). A particular interest of mine is the on-going introduction of digital technologies for health care and how such new technologies will affect the systems' performance in various ways (Hint: potentially enormously, but not in the ways most people appear to believe...).

My CV can be found here. My research homepage at Lund University, including research outputs can be found here.

Below is a presentation of my current activities and recent publications.

Current research projects

1. E-health: Outcomes, cost-effectiveness, and equality of digital primary care in a Swedish health systems perspective. Funded by Forte; 2019-2021 (extended). Principal investigator.

2. Digital care and Covid-19: The scope for scaling up digital care in a time of an infectious pandemic in Sweden. Funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR); 2020-2021. Principal investigator. Related files can be found here.

3. Evaluating the impact of digitalization on the effectiveness and productivity of primary care providers in Sweden. Funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR); 2022-2024. Principal investigator.

4. Analysis of the scope, effects, and costs of informal care in Sweden. Funded by Skandia. Contributing researcher in collaboration with colleagues from Linnéus University and Dalarna University. Some related files can be found here.

5. Evaluation of the impact of social health insurance reform in Cambodia. Funded by GTZ. Contributing researcher in collaboration with colleagues at SMGH and Cambodia.

6. Investigating the impact of performance based contracting for hospital services in Lebanon. Funded by the British Medical Research Council (BMRC). Contributing researcher in collaboration with colleagues from the American University in Beirut, Lebaon.

7. Investigating the effects of digital technologies on health care staff. Funded by Afa. Contributing researcher in collaboration with colleagues from Lund Technical University (LTH).

8. Evaluating the impact of social health insurance reform in Zambia. Funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR). Contributing researcher in collaboration with colleagues at SMGH.

Recent publications and manuscripts (pre-prints)

Ekman, B, Thulesius, H, Wilkens, J, Arvidsson, E (2022) Digitalization of health care: findings from key informant interviews in Sweden on technical, regulatory, and patient safety aspects, JMIR Preprints. 15/04/2022:38746; https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/38746.

Vicente J, McKee KJ, Magnusson L, Johansson P, Ekman B, Hanson E (2022) Informal care provision among male and female working carers: Findings from a Swedish national survey. PLoS ONE 17(3): e0263396. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263396.

Ekman, B., Arvidsson, E., Thulesius, H. et al. Impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on primary care utilization: evidence from Sweden using national register data. BMC Res Notes 14, 424 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-021-05839-7.

Hepburn, JS, Mohamed IS, Ekman, B, Sundewall, J (2021) Review of the inclusion of SRHR interventions in essential packages of health services in low- and lower-middle income countries, Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 29:1, 1985826; https://doi.org/10.1080/26410397.2021.1985826.

Johansson, MF [...] Ekman, B and Harmstål Hammar, L (2021) A comparison of spouse and non-spouse carers of people with dementia: a descriptive analysis of Swedish national survey data, BMC Geriatrics, 21:338; https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-021-02264-0.

Wilkens, J, Thulesius, H, Arvidsson, E, Ekman, B (2020) Study protocol: effects, costs and distributional impact of digital primary care for infectious diseases – an observational, registry-based study in Sweden, BMJ Open;10:e038618; https://doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2020-038618.

Ekman, B et al (2020) Costing analysis of a digital first-line treatment platform for patients with knee and hip osteoarthritis in Sweden, PLoS ONE 15(8):e0236342.

Khalife, J, Ammar, W, Emmelin, M, El-Jardali, F, and Ekman, B (2020) Hospital performance and payment: impact of integrating pay-for-performance on healthcare effectiveness in Lebanon, Wellcome Open Research, 5:95.

Ekman, B et al. (2020) Sustainable and equitable provision of wheelchairs in low- and middle-income countries: an economic assessment of the models for wheelchair provision in Tajikistan, Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology; https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2020.1745909.

Mishra, S, Pupulin, A, Ekman, B et al. (2020) National priority assistive product list development in low resource countries: lessons learned from Tajikistan, Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology; https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2020.1745908.

Ekman, B, Thulesius, H, Wilkens, J, Lindgren, A, Cronborg, O, Arvidsson, E (2019) Utilization of digital primary care in Sweden: Descriptive analysis of claims data on demographics, socioeconomics, and diagnoses, International Journal of Medical Informatics, 127, 134-140.

Ekman, B (2017) Cost Analysis of a Digital Health Care Model in Sweden, PharmacoEconomics Open, https://doi.org/10.1007/s41669-017-0059-7.

Miscellanous

In my role as researcher at LU, I also supervise three PhD-students and a handful of Master's students. I regularly respond to requests for peer-review by academic journal editors across a number of fields. I have also acted as comittee member at PhD-defences and written assessments for associate professorship appointments.

Over the past decade I have been the course leader and lecturer in the Health Economics and Health Systems course in the MPH program at Lund University. Together with colleagues at SMGH, I will co-lecture in the up-coming advanced level course Health Systems in a Global Perspective: Methods and Applications, a fully online course that will run in the Fall semester of 2022.

Get in touch at bjorn.ekman@med.lu.se