About IHE

IHE is a well-established, independent, health economic research institute that provides high-quality research and expert consultation in the field of health care. We have ongoing projects with over 50 customers worldwide representing national authorities, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers, industry associations and patient groups.

IHE was founded in 1979 as the first health economic research center in Sweden and is one of the oldest health economic research centers in Europe.

In addition to the head office in Lund, IHE has also an office in central Stockholm.

IHE consists of about 30 highly qualified, multidisciplinary specialists in health economics, medical sciences and statistics. Among these, 11 have a PhD and more than half have at least 10 years of experience in health economics. This makes IHE one of Sweden’s largest teams of health economists. IHE has close collaborations with academia and several employees also work part-time at Lund University or Karolinska Institutet. IHE is owned through IHE Holding AB by IHE’s CEO, IHE’s staff and the Bengt Jönsson Foundation for Health Economic Research.

Board of directors

The board is seated in Lund. It consists of:
Linus Jönsson (chairman), MD PhD – professor of health economics at Karolinska Institutet
Joakim Ramsberg, PhD – head of research and society at the Swedish Brain Foundation
Jenni Nordborg PhD – head of international relations at LIF, the trade association for the research-based pharmaceutical industry in Sweden
Carolina Samuelsson, MD, PhD – hospital director of the Halland Hospital
Michael Willis – fil dr, research director at IHE

How it began …

The professor of economics at Lund University, Ingemar Ståhl, had attached two doctoral students, Bengt Jönsson and Björn Lindgren, to his department. Both came to defend their theses on subjects related to problems of health economic methodology.

To provide researchers in the field of health economics with a platform from which they could continue their research, the Institute for Social Medical Economics was established. This was then closed down when IHE AB was formed in 1979. At that time, the business was owned by the two pharmaceutical companies’ trade associations for domestic (LIF-Läkemedelsindustriföreningen) and foreign (RUFI-Representative Association for Foreign Pharmaceutical Industries) pharmaceutical companies. In 1988, the Swedish state monopoly for pharmacies, Apoteksbolaget, took over the responsibility for IHE. This was after the government Pharmaceutical Inquiry in the 1980s came to emphasize the importance of Apoteksbolaget’s expanded role as part of the health promotion work in society.

In conjunction with the deregulation on the pharmacy market in Sweden, the company was restructured to preserve IHE as an institute with high-quality research in health economics, and since 2010, IHE has been owned by IHE’s CEO, IHE’s staff and the Bengt Jönsson Foundation for Health Economic Research.