Why business modeling is crucial in the development of e-Health technologies

The impact and uptake of information and communication technologies that support health care are rather low. Current frameworks for e-health development suffer from a lack of:

• fitting infrastructures
• inability to find funding
• complications with scalability
• uncertainties regarding effectiveness and sustainability

These issues can be addressed by defining a better implementation strategy early in the development of e-Health technologies.

A business model help to determine such an implementation strategy by involving all important stakeholders in a value-driven dialogue on what the technology should accomplish. This idea also seems promising to e-health, as it can contribute to the whole development of e-health technology. We therefore suggest that business modeling can be used as an effective approach to supporting holistic development of e-health technologies.

The resulting business model acts as the basis for implementation. The development of e-health technology should focus more on the context by:

• emphasizing what this technology should contribute in practice to the needs of all involved stakeholders.
• incorporating the idea of business modeling to cocreate and formulate a set of critical success factors that will influence the sustainability and effectiveness.

Admittedly, the lack of publications that discuss how business models can be created is a problem in e-health. There are few approaches to defining business models exist or remain cursory. There is another barrier. Introducing business-like thinking in health care is a sensitive topic. In the field of health care, the focus is always the well-being of patients; thus, focusing on money is considered in a negative light. However, with the emerging problems that health care is facing, business-like thinking could be pivotal in keeping quality health care affordable.

Please read the full article. There are cases of different business models. The link is provided below.

Do you have ideas on ways to increase e-health development? What changes do you think need to happen to promote this type of technology in healthcare?