Karsten Krogsgaard Sommer

The Copilot report from the Norwegian DPA wait is over! https://lnkd.in/erdzMz-B. NTNU identified features where a user can ask M365 Copilot to assess a colleague's behavior and work performance. Although this action is not in principle affected by the prohibition in Article 22 of the GDPR, it will also entail a processing of personal data that is unlikely to have a valid legal basis. Many thanks to Eirik Gulbrandsen, Sebastian Forbes, Ingrid Espolin Johnson Kari Laumann. Steinar Ostmoe

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📢 New preprint out from Statens Serum Institut Epidemiology Research - SSI: COVID-19 vs. Influenza in Denmark 2022-2024 We compared the burden of COVID-19 and influenza in terms of absolute numbers of severe disease and 30-day mortality risk after hospitalisation. Key Points: 👉 COVID-19 caused significantly more hospitalizations (24,687) and deaths (2,393) than influenza (8,682 hospitalizations, 522 deaths). 👉 The COVID-19 burden (age- and sex adjusted) was twice that of influenza. The difference was most pronounced in the first "post-pandemic" year and among those 65+. 👉 COVID-19 showed year-round impact, while influenza maintained its typical winter seasonality. 👉 Among hospitalized patients, COVID-19 had higher 30-day mortality risk. This was most evident 12-30 days post-admission (50% higher). 👉 This increased mortality was most pronounced in the elderly, those without a recent C19-💉 (within 180 days), and those with comorbidities. Implications: While moving towards seasonal patterns, COVID-19 still poses a greater burden than influenza. COVID-19 vaccination programs remain crucial, especially for older adults and those with comorbidities. Ongoing public health vigilance is warranted! LINK: https://lnkd.in/ddTcNXM3

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We need to talk about fearfluencers and their influence on policy development. Last week, a civic proposal in Denmark managed to secure the magic 50,000 signatures, obligating the Danish Parliament to debate banning social media platforms for anyone under 18. This proposal perfectly embodies the logic fearfluencers thrive on: framing their arguments around the desire to “protect the children” - because what could be more cruel than failing to safeguard them? But here’s the problem: These proposals are designed to make you feel good instantly. Their simplicity sidesteps academic research, dismisses nuance, and ignores critical notions of digital rights. This is why Maia Kahlke Lorentzen and I wrote an opinion piece in Politiken to investigate how fearfluencers are shaping today’s policy landscape, and what research actually points towards when it comes to youth, social media’s, and mental health. The current debate is a direct reflection of Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation, where social media is positioned as the sole cause of declining well-being in young generations. However, academic research shows that there’s consensus on the fact, that this CANNOT be documented. Correlation is not causation - a basic principle of scientific reasoning that seems to be missing from the conversation. Fearfluencers are driving a policy agenda that risks undermining young people’s rights to information and privacy, all fueled by a moral panic. They create problems with one hand and sell the solutions with the other. This is not the kind of policy-making that fosters meaningful change. Of course, we need regulations that ensure safety and well-being in the digital space. The EU is already working on such initiatives, but we must avoid falling into the traps set by fearfluencers. What we need is a proper political debate, one that embraces nuance, complexity, and paradoxes rather than oversimplifications. I’ll link to our opinion piece in the comments once it’s online. 📷 The picture is from THIS festival in October, where I also had the pleasure of talking about this and the “anxious generation”. ________________ #digitalrights #techpolicy #mentalhealth #jonathanhaidt #anxiousgeneration

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#AI #Discrimination Sweden as well - a discriminatory social benefits fraud detecting system??!! Today, at a seminar in the Finnish Parliament on AI and human rights, I spoke about discriminatory surveillance systems targeting immigrants in the EU. As examples, I mentioned reported practices in the Netherlands and Denmark. It is disheartening that the choices regarding the use of AI in EU countries are like this. And: Now, Sweden as well,?! In Finland, the use of AI must ensure respect for human rights; its application should be directed more towards promoting equality💪 https://lnkd.in/eKwyZBEi

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I am watching the Swedish government's presentation of the research and innovation bill. A significant and important initiative with bold rhetoric. Inspiring!   Academic research is incredibly important. However, it seems there is a bit of an overreliance on the idea that research and research-based innovation will solve "everything”. More is required to build the growth engines of tomorrow. For instance, it is not academic AI-research that is currently driving the AI development or that will allow us to completely now "catch up" in our competitiveness.   How we build a much stronger Swedish tech sector that can compete globally and participate in the race for future growth markets is, I believe, especially important to address. We need massive investment to enable early-stage technology development, startups, new types of public-private partnerships, entrepreneurial and globally competitive innovation hubs, foreign direct investments in those, super-focused strategic initiatives on selected growth markets, etc. And leading research for sure. I hope that we in addition to this bill will soon see even more initiatives. With a clear focus on also scalable solutions and world class entrepreneurship.   Draghi's EU report emphasizes the importance of focusing on digital services, as much of today's technological leadership is created in these markets due to their scalability for groundbreaking digital tech. Has the government mostly listened to the traditional industry's needs for research and innovation, or are they also considering other markets where even faster growth can be achieved? There are many interesting discussions to have here. We are already sitting on a gold mine of Swedish talent and creativity. Let's use it as an unfair advantage to build unprecedented growth in tomorrow's AI-driven economy. The opportunities are everywhere but we need to take them now. With vision, willingness to try new things, courage and a razor sharp focus.

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🏥💫 Noklus is an indispensable UniHealth EU partner, as Dr. Sverre Sandberg team will perform a pre-market performance evaluation of the instruments and assays for #Influenza and #Covid among healthcare workers in this project.💊 ⚕ 🤒 Evaluation performance will also be conducted among lay persons and will include evaluation of the #diagnostic performance and user-friendliness of the instruments and assays. 🏥 Noklus will also perform a cross-reactivity study in a hospital laboratory and develop a methodology for establishing and implementing external quality assurance for the instruments during a pandemic. 🎯 Noklus goal is to ensure good quality of instruments used for point-of-care testing that can be used in the potential next #pandemic. This to secure that the devices, such as #Pebble give reliable test results. 🔬🌎 #UniHealth #POCdiagnostics #ivdr #globalpartnership #HorizonEU #ResearchImpactEU

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Earnings management in local government healthcare reporting: Financial distress vs. peer influence? Jaana Kettunen, Pasi Leppänen, Hannu Ojala, Jani Saastamoinen https://lnkd.in/dYfBzQFN Abstract This paper examines if financial distress and/or peer influence predict local governments’ earnings management in the context of municipal healthcare expense reporting in Finland. Our statistical analyses use data hand-collected from all Finnish municipalities between 2016 and 2021. We document peer influence on earnings management by understating healthcare expenses in the public sector: Our results show that a municipality’s decision to manage earnings upwards is positively associated with the healthcare district’s central municipality's choice to understate its expenses. However, we do not find support for financial distress predicting earnings management. In our setting, peer influence appears to be a stronger motivation for financial reporting choice than municipality-specific characteristics.

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Will clouds help cool or warm our world in the years ahead? The EarthCARE satellite will soon blast off on a mission to find out, aiming to investigate what role clouds could play in the fight against climate change. Collaboration between European Space Agency and Japan's JAXA space agency is scheduled to launch Tuesday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from California's Vandenberg base. The two-ton satellite will orbit nearly 400 kilometers above Earth for 3 years, building a complete profile of those fluffy clouds over our heads. They are one of the main contributors to how the climate changes—and one of the least understood. Clouds—from cumulus and cirrus to cumulonimbus—are a varied and complicated phenomenon. Their composition depends on where they are located in the Troposphere, Earth's lowest layer of atmosphere. Troposphere starts at around 8 kilometers above the polar regions, but near the equator it begins at around 18 kilometers up. This means that clouds affect the climate differently depending on their altitude and latitude. For example, white and bright cumulus clouds, which are made out of water droplets, sit quite low and work like a parasol, reflecting Sun's radiation back into space and cooling the atmosphere. Higher up, cirrus clouds made of ice crystals allow solar radiation to pass through, heating up our world. Cirrus clouds then trap in the heat like a "blanket, Parasol or blanket? So understanding nature of clouds has become very important. EarthCARE will become the first satellite to measure the vertical/horizontal distribution of clouds. Two of the satellite's instruments will flash light at the clouds to probe their depths. The Lidar instrument will use a laser pulse to measure both clouds and aerosols, which are tiny particles in the atmosphere such as dust, pollen or human-emitted pollutants like smoke or ash. Aerosols are the "pre-cursors" to clouds. The satellite's radar will pierce through the clouds to measure how much water they contain. It will also track the speed of the clouds moving through the atmosphere, similar to how radar helps police nab speeding cars. The satellite's other instruments will measure shape and temperature of the clouds. All this data will create the first complete picture of clouds from the perspective of a satellite. Scientific community is eagerly awaiting this information so it can update climate models that estimate how quickly our world will warm,ESA said. The amount of solar radiation that gets past Earth's clouds could therefore be crucial to understanding and mitigating the impact of human-driven global warming. Mission aims to find out whether the current effect of the clouds, which is rather cooling at the moment—the parasol outweighs the blanket—will become stronger or weaker. This trend has become more difficult to predict as global warming has changed the distribution of clouds.

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Public sector, private or non-profit association? In Finland, public service provision in social welfare and health care has for a long time been increasingly outsourced through competitive tendering to be purchased from private parties. Less attention is paid, however, to the fact that service production in Finland is complemented by the so called third sector, non-profit associations. There are a huge number of non-profit associations in Finland that do great work for issues they consider important. I myself had the pleasure of attending the meeting of such an association, Romaniperheiden tukiyksikkö ry. The purpose of the association is to support Roma families in challenging everyday situations. Finland is an equal country between different kinds of people, but there are groups of people in Finland's history whose treatment has not been very equal. Roma still face problems related to equality and inclusion in their everyday lives. Employment among Roma is lagging behind and the level of education is lower and narrower than average compared to the rest of the Finnish population, even though education has exploded at all levels of education in recent years. The reasons for the challenges of inclusion, education and employment can be found both in history and in the present, both inside and outside the community. (source: Romanomissio) The Roma Family Support Unit received project funding from Sosiaali- ja terveysministeriö, which enables it to hire Voitto and Marita Friman to focus on the wonderful work for Roma families, which they have been doing altruistically for a long time. You can get acquainted with the association's activities at https://lnkd.in/dY2K76iU Different cultures are richness. However, the most important thing is to face the human being first and foremost. https://lnkd.in/dD-dGhZu

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Hello my #Swedish LinkedIn connections! Ulf Holmbäck Ulf Ivarsson Claude Marcus Mia Ekdahl Johanna Wollert Melin Calin Giubega Helena Blažinčić Michel Tagliati, MD Christian Ekström Yvonne Ericsson Géraldine Fauville Jan Skvaril Alicia H. Timmy Ghiurau Klas Johansson Jenny Vinglid Luis Quintero Maks Akhnyc and others who I may have missed. Let us know your thoughts, ideas, recommendations. Check out: #Obesity in 10 countries in 10 days in less than 10 minutes/day. Today is about obesity in #Sweden 🇸🇪 . Tomorrow is about obesity in #Denmark 🇩🇰. Population: 10.49 million (2022) People with overweight and obesity: more than 50% At risk of: 200+ comorbidities Obesity experts: No data Estimated annual spent on obesity/year: +EUR 3 Billion A higher share of men than women were classified as overweight, amounting to 40.4 percent of men compared to 28.9 percent of women. The share of the population who were obese was around 16 percent among both men and women. (Sep. 27, 2023) "Typically known for the active and healthy lifestyle of its inhabitants, recent years have seen much change in the rates of overweight and obesity in Sweden. With the country’s obesity rates increasingly being cited as a public health concern, EASO sat down with Dr Carl-Erik Flodmark, one of Sweden’s leading obesity specialists and a member of the National Board of Health and Welfare, to get his take on the nation’s evolving obesity landscape." Read more in EASO article: https://lnkd.in/gxVJ8JQq Current and future costs of obesity in Sweden - ScienceDirect "The total cost of obesity in Sweden in 2016 was estimated to EUR 2.7 billion, or EUR 377 per inhabitant aged 25 years and older in 2016. The largest cost item was costs for production loss, which amounted to 80% of the total cost of obesity. Only 18% of the estimated costs of obesity were found in the sector of health- and social care (EUR 475 million). Nearly half of the costs for production loss were related to permanent sick leave. Remaining costs for production loss included costs for premature death and temporary sick leave, constituting 35% and 18% respectively of the total cost for production loss." Source: https://lnkd.in/gSqXduRE Watch and read the comments: My 14 Healthy Habits from living in Sweden"how they're beating obesity" - YouTube, Time: 17:14 min. https://lnkd.in/gVhvRwdC Looking for solutions or resources? Download #MYNDSET on the App Store in Sweden for FREE until Aug 31. https://lnkd.in/gMfZ4_DE Ask your doctor if #Ozempic #Wegovy #Mounjaro #Zepbound or bariatric surgery are right for you. #obesity #weightloss #weightmanagement #behaviouraltherapy #digitaltherapeutics #AI #AR #VR #meds #GLP1 #bariatricsurgery #food #nutrition #access #affordability #sustainability #outcomes

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Nobody has time for the usual employee surveys anymore. Anne M. Schüller presents activating, agile survey tools in a 5-part series. In many places, the well-known regular employee surveys are still being carried out, those with long questionnaires and a predetermined tick box answer scheme. The aim is to gauge the mood of the workforce, uncover problems and obtain ideas for improvement. Such surveys are retrospective, i.e. oriented towards the past, and they usually take quite a long time to complete. However, in order to be fit for the future, it is essential to look far ahead and to act agilely, adaptively and quickly. Misinterpretations are virtually pre-programmed with checkbox questionnaires. Coming up with the right reasons when “Rather important” or “Less important” is ticked off is like poking around in the fog. But there is room for individual comments at the end of the questionnaire, isn’t there? Most employees don’t write anything in there “because it’s not worth the effort.” Pre-formulated standard questionnaires, such as those that can be downloaded from the Internet, are completely useless if you want to carry out individual surveys. If the implementation is sloppy or the results are mishandled, this triggers mistrust and fear. Even seemingly small mistakes can become deeply engraved in the collective memory of the workforce. As a rule, the respective findings are included in a manager’s performance evaluation and form the basis for variable salary components. But fear of bonuses is the mother of invention. It can therefore happen that bosses more or less dictate the desired answers to their employees. Read more in the article: https://lnkd.in/eyjeNceE #employeesurveys #surveys

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Call for Participants. Hvis du er interesseret i det her fantastiske og gratis mulighed for undervisere, skiv til Mirela Redzic på vegne af Historielærerforeningen på: mirela@historielaerer.dk SENSEI at EuroClio’s Annual Conference 2025: We are delated to announce the call for participants to join us at EuroClio’s next Annual Conference, which will take place between the 3rd and 5th April, 2025 in Bratislava, Slovakia. Our project covers partial attendance, please see the conditions below. About the Annual Conference: Event will bring together history educators and professionals to explore historical patterns through discussions, workshops, and networking opportunities. About the Project The School EducatioN for Sustainable and Equal Inclusion [SENSEI] project seeks to create and deliver courses on inclusive education for both pre-service and in-service teachers, by looking at current good practices in inclusion, testing them in different contexts, and integrating them with new approaches. This includes best practices for the inclusion of students: • With special education needs, including high-attaining students; • with a migrant background; • that are part of national, cultural, or religious minorities; • from a different socioeconomic background; • of students that are members of the LGBTQI+ community; and • equitable representation of female students. Participants that we are looking for? Are you working in the field of education? Are you a practising teacher or still learning? Would you like to share or learn more about how to deliver content that caters to students/clients of diverse backgrounds? Even when it seems difficult to put so many diverse groups together, or when there are systemic issues? To apply, participants are required to have a working level of English proficiency. The deadline for applications is January 20 at midnight. We can only sponsor participants from the following countries: Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, and Spain. We will reach out with selection results towards the end of January 2025. What do we offer? We offer to finance your travel, stay, food and accommodation for two-three nights. The number of hotel night stays depends on whether you would prefer to be in a single hotel room or are willing to share a double room with someone (upon request, we can arrange for individuals who are acquainted to share the same room). If you would like to stay longer and participate in the whole event, you can extend your stay at your own expense - we can assist you with that. Additionally, for all selected participants, the whole Conference fee is waived, meaning that if you prolong your stay, you don’t need to pay for the ticket and joint lunches/dinners, only the hotel and individual meals. EuroClio - European Association of History Educators Historielærerforeningen

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A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure to attend and speak at the Value-Based Health 2030 Conference in Tallinn. Talking about a digital health project like H2O in Estonia felt like preaching to the converted! This is probably one of the most advanced digitalized country in Europe – especially when it comes to healthcare. It was really interesting to hear about the OnContact project, a like-minded project they have been running in Estonia. And of course, listening to a great presentation by Francesca Colombo from the OECD - OCDE on why #VBHC matters to healthcare systems and how digital technologies can be the catalyst, puts it all in a different context. These are not just projects, we need to find a way to connect the dots and make our joint vision of patient centered care a reality for patients across the globe. Helis Pokker Francesca Colombo European Alliance for Value in Health EFPIA - European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations

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Some rural regions carve out a really positive development path for themselves, others not so much. This might well be the case despite preconditions appear to be quite similar. How can we better understand what prosesses are at play, leading to such different outcomes? And how can such an understanding inspire policy development? At an ESPON Programme seminar in Trysil Norway we gathered a larger numer of policymakers, researchers and practitioners representing 14 European countries in a quest to explore this issue. Interestingly, this meeting identified several of the same patterns as this article, underscoring how percieved and real opportunity spaces are created in a dance between position and opposition forces, underscoring the vital roles of open debate, free elections, adaptive institutions, agency and change agents within the private and public sectors. With Hjalti Nielsen Eduardo Medeiros Atle Hauge Ulla. Higdem Odd Godal Wiktor Szydarowski Helmik Slora Kristiansen Bjørn Terje Andersen Irene McMaster Jan Edøy Nora Geisdotter Bækkelund Kommunal- og distriktsdepartementet (KDD) Martin Guillermo Ramirez Stig Are Østlund Skoglund Marie Bohman Låte Hanne Velure Turid Backe-Viken Marcello Graziano Preben Woll Bostad https://lnkd.in/d7ykTrA2

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Today I am focusing on the responsible use of antibiotics. I am digitally attending the annual meeting about the Danish use of antibiotics to keep both people an animals healthy and how antibiotic resistance is developing. Interested in the details? Covering the surveillance of antimicrobial use and the occurrence of antimicrobial resistance in bacteria from food animals, food, and humans in Denmark: https://lnkd.in/d6avwdbQ #OneHealth #AMR #WAAW #WAAW2024 #AntibioticAwarenessWeek #AntibioticResistance

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Unfortunately one fire department in Finland was in the news once again about discrimination, harassment and unfair behaviour, mainly coming from colleagues and supervisors. https://lnkd.in/dxV8Z9BK This kind of culture begins from the leadership. I put there a list for all leaders to check, what you can do as a leader for this kind of culture, which is toxic and makes people want to leave. Do you find this helpful? Talking about zero tolerance is just talk until you start to take actions. #fireandrescue #harassment #discrimination

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