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An eHealth Innovation Map for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Authors:
Ruud Janssen
Marike Hettinga
Sikke Visser
Robbert Menko
Hilco Prins
Irene Krediet
Timber Haaker
Lianne Bodenstaff

Keywords: eHealth; innovation map; innovation route; evidence guidelines; health care system; stakeholder

Abstract:
eHealth applications hold many promises, for instance to improve the quality of health care, to increase its accessibility, or to reduce its cost. Yet, many eHealth innovations never reach the stage where they get embedded into routine health care. This is due in part to a lack of evidence that these innovations indeed deliver what they promise. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular, collecting convincing evidence for eHealth innovations proves to be a challenge as the available time, resources and expertise to do so are often limited. In response to this challenge, the research group ICT Innovations in Health Care at the Windesheim University of Applied Sciences initiated a joint research project, Successful Entrepreneurship in eHealth, with 28 eHealth SMEs, care providers, and other stakeholders in the Dutch health care system. The project’s main result is an eHealth innovation map. This map consists of a diagram showing eHealth SMEs which parties in the Dutch health care system to involve, their roles and their mutual relations, their interests in eHealth innovation, and the kinds of evidence that may convince them of the added value of an eHealth innovation. A set of corresponding fact sheets was developed to provide eHealth SMEs with concise yet easily accessible information for choosing an appropriate “innovation route” and for determining what evidence to collect for relevant stakeholders. Preliminary findings show that the innovation map is indeed a useful instrument, and that the corresponding fact sheets manage to capture all the essential information needed to guide an eHealth SME along a chosen innovation route.

Pages: 292 to 301

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2014

Publication date: March 23, 2014

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4359

ISBN: 978-1-61208-327-8

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from March 23, 2014 to March 27, 2014