#1 Sweden

In terms of the result, the top 10 of the NRI is made up exclusively of advanced economies. That group is dominated by the Nordics, with Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway featuring in the top 7, and Iceland coming in at a not-so-distant 15th place. All members of the top 10 are relatively close to each other, and they tend to do well across all pillars.

Sweden’s performance is remarkable in every aspect. The country leads four of the 10 pillars of the Network Readiness Index:

• Infrastructure and digital content 
• Individual usage 
• Business usage 
• Economic impact 

Sweden also appears in the top 10 of a further five pillars, while in
 the last one, skills, it ranks a very solid 12th.

Sweden has in place a virtuous circle. This conducive environment, combined with the highest degree of readiness and widespread use of ubiquitous technologies, maximizes the economic and social impacts of ICT, creating new business opportunities, fostering innovation, and reinforcing a knowledge-based economy.
In this near-perfect assessment, only a handful of indicators call for attention: the typical corporate tax rate is fairly high at 53 percent of profits (114th), and two indicators reveal the length of certain administrative procedures which contrasts with the otherwise extremely efficient institutional framework.
In addition, the government has room to improve its online presence and its degree of interaction with the population.

Re-engineering healthcare 

For the Stockholm County Council (SCC), Sweden’s second-largest health system, patient safety is a top priority. The SCC has implemented a text-mining system that lets medical staff automate a systemic medical review that sifts through both structured and unstructured data to review charts, search for specific triggers, or locate indicators of adverse events. 

Since its inception in January 2010, the program has spread across the country. Today regulators are planning to award bonuses based on patient safety quantified by these reviews. If the results at the SCC are duplicated countrywide, the system could slash annual healthcare injury costs in Sweden by SEK 2 billion and reduce deaths caused by injuries by up to 50 percent.