Navigating Across Complex Barriers between Universities and the Public Healthcare Sector: Experiences from Collaboration in Education

There are many benefits associated with university/industry collaboration including the transfer of novel and useful knowledge and building innovation competences for the future workforce. In this rapport, we present the experiences from a 3-year innovation project between four university partners and two partners from the public healthcare sector. The project centered on creating innovation in the public healthcare sector and preparing students to enter the future workforce by taking real-world challenges from healthcare and transferring them to university courses. Based on this innovation project, we outline the complex relationship between university education and the healthcare sector and provide a set of useful recommendations for facilitating student collaboration with healthcare professionals. Our experience-based recommendations give useful insights about university/industry collaboration and exemplify how partners in these innovation projects can strengthen their innovation capabilities by organizing collaborations, communicating findings, and building new agendas.