Johan Hjertqvist Manager Timbro Health Unit Stockholm, Sweden

Johan Hjertqvist is the Manager of the Timbro Health Unit, a division of the Timbro Policy Group, in Stockholm, Sweden. Timbro Health is a new operation, which since 2001 has advocated market influence and consumer power in health care. Mr Hjertqvist has a background in health care policy and welfare entrepreneurial activities. Since 1999 he has led a four-year-project analysing the transformation of health care in the Stockholm region. The first report from this project was published in 2000 ("The health care cultural revolution") and the second one in November, 2001 ("A journey to the moon - or a flop?"). His next books, due in 2002, will describe Swedish health care reform and discussion for an international audience, and introduce new ideas for the future health society.

Mr Hjertqvist also acts as an adviser to the Greater Stockholm Council, specializing in market infrastructures where purchasers and providers can meet. Creating new arenas was also the idea behind his projects, conducted between 1995 and 1999, to bring private health care entrepreneurs and contractors together to strengthen the impact of market pluralism.

He is a frequent international lecturer on health care reform. He writes newsletters and is a member of international health care networks and institutions such as the Healthcare Consumer Policy Network, The Frontier Center of Winnipeg, Canada, and the Russian Federal Institute for Welfare Reform.

Mr Hjertqvist has a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Stockholm. In the late 1970s he was instrumental in the founding and building of the Timbro Policy Group, for a long time the sole think tank in Sweden (and still the most influential one). He was editor-in-chief of the NPT, another Timbro operation and the first Swedish news agency to promote business and economy material. During the middle 1980s he belonged to a small group of entrepreneurs starting the first private Swedish risk capital market. He also worked as a Senior Counsellor at the Burson-Marsteller Communications Group. Between 1991 and 1994 he was deputy Mayor of his home town of Tyresö outside Stockholm. He is engaged in Internet projects related to consumer power in health care as well as the development of local democracy. Parallel to his Timbro Health engagement he runs his own consultancy agency.

Mr Hjertqvist is the author of a number of books on politics and health and has contributed to anthologies on similar subjects.