With the lecture "From Research to Real-World Impact: Advancing Dementia Prevention to Meet Societal Needs", Professor Jönsson wants to shine a spotlight on one of the greatest challenges of our time: how promising research results can actually reach patients and society.
He describes the dementia area as a field where the implementation gap is particularly large.
– We have not had any experience in healthcare to diagnose and find these conditions at an early stage. If you need to change how healthcare works, before you can use a new technology, it becomes so much more difficult, he says.
It is not reasonable for society to spend enormous resources on developing treatments that then do not reach patients
Linus Jönsson points to everything from a lack of resources and expertise to stigma and uncertainty about early diagnostics as obstacles to new methods having an impact. At the same time, the need is urgent. New biomarkers, preventive interventions and disease-modifying drugs are on their way in – but without structures for implementation, they risk getting stuck between research results and everyday clinical practice.
– It is not reasonable for society to spend enormous resources on developing treatments that then do not reach the patients, Linus Jönsson continues.
In his research, he is therefore working to develop health economic models, decision support and implementation studies that can help healthcare make informed decisions. One example is the EU project in which his group is developing clinical decision support to determine which patients should be offered prevention, biomarker testing or treatment.
Investment in implementation needed
But according to Jönsson, very little resources are spent on actually figuring out how to implement these innovations and how they work in reality. When asked what would be required for Sweden to have a better impact on health research, he is clear:
– I would like to see one percent of health care costs spent on evaluation of new methods and implementation research. This type of research has so far been underfunded, says Linus Jönsson.
He also calls for stronger structures for follow-up and more systematic implementation processes, for example through randomized implementation studies. For researchers in the field of ageing and health, his keynote at SWEAH's conference will be a reminder that innovation does not end with a published article or regulatory approval.
– It is when the methods work in reality – in primary care, at memory clinics and in the meeting with patients – that the research reaches its full value.
Register and find the program for SWEAH's conference on 10-11 November 2026.
