“They should be tested like banks are” – Resilience, crisis preparedness and security of supply of the Finnish health system (RECPHEALS)

RECPHEALS aims to develop models to improve resilience, preparedness to crises, and security of supply in Finnish health care.

Background

The resilience, preparedness to crises and security of supply are of importance when the society is dealing with catastrophic events. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought out both good practices as well as vulnerabilities in the health cares system.

Analysing the responses of the health care system during the pandemic gives an approach to investigate the capacity of the system to prepare to and manage crises.

Objectives 

• To produce tools and practices to support resilience and crisis management in health care 
• To explore potential threats posing to health care system. In addition to the COVID-19 pandemic, the operating capacity of health care is threatened by other crises, such as major accidents and cyberattacks. 
• To assess the capacity of the health care system to prepare for threats
• To develop and assess means the health care system can use to prepare to and control external threats and shocks. 

Implementation

RECPHEALS draws on national level policy analysis, case studies and mixed method approach by combining qualitative analysis of interview and policy document data with statistics and published research.

RECPHEALS includes four work packages:

• WP1 Management and decision-making during COVID-19 crisis, managing the pandemic and lessons learned for future crises preparedness  
• WP2 Moving beyond COVID-19 – crises preparedness and identification of crisis scenarios
• WP3 Understanding the effects of different crises scenarios on health system resilience
• WP4 Building a general resilience and crises management model for the Finnish health system

Link to the RECPHEALS work packages

Partners

Tampere University, Faculty of Social Sciences

Tampere University, Faculty of Management and Business

Funding

Academy of Finland, Special funding for research into crisis preparedness and security of supply

Contact 

Ilmo Keskimäki
Research Professor
phone: +358 29 524 7256 
Email: [email protected]