Organisation

Health Consumer Powerhouse is the leading European provider of consumer information on health care. The Powerhouse is dedicating ideas and resources to the development of consumer empowerment action. We analyse health care and compare the outcomes, designing consumer information tools like health care system and Illnesses indexes, consumer press and education. We are a registered Swedish entity working from Stockholm and Brussels and soon also in Canada.

Mission

Europeans will move from weak patients to powerful consumers. This process requires more than just legal rights of choice between providers or the option of going abroad, accompanied by public funding, for necessary treatment. Such opportunities will be of limited value while patients have yet to learn how to navigate the care system, how to appraise the service provider and how to act as health consumers.

We believe in the active consumer building up pressure from below for change. To empower individuals and groups to take action, we analyse the healthcare systems and design the outcomes as consumer information. Using such tools and knowledge, health consumers can make choices among providers, payers and methods. Daily benchmarks make a difference.

Initiative

The Health Consumer Powerhouse is an initiative by Mr Johan Hjertqvist, the Swedish health policy reformist and entrepreneur of ideas. Now he has taken his empowerment concept to Brussels and the EU. Mr Hjertqvist is a well-know international lecturer, writer and policy entrepreneur. He is now the president of the Powerhouse.

Our Service

Today we work towards and develop health consumer information services addressing two major audiences:

Government & Policy Makers
Our Health Consumer Indexes help Influence politicians and other policy makers to understand the importance of consumer friendly information to make better decisions. Today we work on the national as well as European health care systems level.

- EuroHealth Consumer Index (2005 and 2006)
- Swedish Health Consumer Index (2004, 2005 and 2006)
- Canadian Health Consumer Index (to be launched 2007)

Health Consumer Powerhouse also develops Diagnosis Indexes which analyse and compare the conditions for illnesses. This is our latest service and still a blue-print. Two Indexes will be launched later this year in Sweden.

- Breast Cancer Index (2006)
- Diabetes Index (2006)

Health care consumers
Health Consumer Powerhouse builds health consumer information to help individuals and groups to better understand and navigate the health care system. We build our own platforms in education and media.

- Din Vård - The first Swedish magazine on health consumerism. The magazine reaches about 400 000 health consumers in daily press and is as well distributed in waiting rooms and among practitioners.
- Health Consumer Development - We prepare for launching a platform for education and training of consumers and organisations (autumn of 2006).

Our customers

The Health Consumer Powerhouse customers pay for the services we offer. Within the large health care industry there are stakeholders eager to access the systems knowledge we acquire building our indices and other services. Our analysis and information are key tools for improvement and has a market value. The Powerhouse holds the intellectual property rights but we are happy to share the outcomes of our work with stakeholders and consumers. Our corporate policy makes clear though that we cannot accept business relations questioning our independence and credibility.