Presidential advisor hopes to cut the hassle of research and enhance its attractiveness

“You need a thorough understanding of how regional healthcare and Karolinska Institutet operate to perform this role, and Maria Eriksdotter has long experience of both,” says KI president, Annika Östman Wernerson.

Closer cooperation with the healthcare sector is one of KI’s focus areas, and the appointment of Professor Eriksdotter marks a step up in this regard. There have been presidential advisors before at KI, but none have had such a broad remit in the healthcare field. 

Maria Eriksdotter is professor of geriatrics and leads a large research group on KI’s Flemingsberg campus. She is also chair of SveDem, a Swedish registry of cognitive/dementia disorders and the largest quality register in the world.

An easy decision

Professor Eriksdotter ended her tenure as dean of KI South last year, since which time she has been operations manager for the integration of BioNut and MedH.

After the summer of 2024, she had intended to concentrate more on her researches on NGF (nerve growth factor), a protein that is critically involved in Alzheimer’s disease, and even though the research is now in an exciting phase, becoming presidential advisor was an easy decision to make. 

“Helping to improve the conditions for clinical research and education in Stockholm is important to me,” she says.

She will now form part of the KI/Region Stockholm management group, which is the most senior level of the education and research partnership. She also represents KI in the national ALF steering committee, which monitors how the agreement is being applied.

Professor Eriksdotter will also be taking over the leadership of two internal forums at KI: KI KLIN, in which heads of department and deans at KI and representatives from KI at theme and function-departments on Karolinska University Hospital meet to discuss research and education in relation to the region; and the KI management’s strategic collaboration advisory committee, which prepares issues related to the partnership. 

Fewer researchers in healthcare

The number of combined positions as doctor/research has declined slightly in Stockholm along with the total number of researchers in the healthcare professions; researchers with a background in fields such as biomedicine and molecular biology, on the other hand, are on the rise. 

“There’s nothing wrong with that, but I think what’s needed is balance,” says Professor Eriksdotter. “This might mean reviewing the career paths for clinical researchers. It’s also important that the time available for research is protected when demands on healthcare production are high.” 

During her years as researcher and doctor, she has seen how the red tape surrounding clinical research has grown cumbersome, a development that is related to advances in, amongst other fields, genetics, biological drugs and large-scale data management. 

“It’s good that there’s support to help researchers comply with the rules and regulations, but at the same time, research can’t be allowed to drown in bureaucracy. There’s so much red tape these days that I’m afraid many researchers are put off researching.”

Professor Eriksdotter believes that some medical fields are in danger of being left unresearched as people feel it involves too much hassle. 

“We’re doing fewer and fewer clinical trials in Sweden,” she says. “If we can reduce the number of rules and make things easier for researchers by not being unduly strict in our interpretation of them, I think we’ll have a lot to gain. We should at least make sure that an impact analysis is performed before any more rules are introduced.”