Information Technology Assignment: Impact Of Digital Transformation For Healthcare
Question
Task:
Your information technology assignment task is to prepare a literature review on the topic “Evaluating the impact of digital transformation for healthcare”.
Analyses each point of view as well as identifying any strength or weakness of research method or findings.
Use relevant and high-quality journal articles, conference, proceedings and government reports.
Show awareness of theories that values and underpin the research.
Answer
2.2. Evaluating the Impact of Digital Transformation for Healthcare
As opined by Sætra & Fosch-Villaronga (2021) with regards to the case scenario of information technology assignment, digital transformation has a huge impact on health care sector. The digital transformation is laying the building blocks of an approach to health care which is completely patient-oriented. Through digitalisation in health care, the health care providers are able to streamline the services and operations. They providers of health care can understand the needs of the patients in a better way. This facilitates building patient loyalty towards the health care providers. The patients also develop trust in their health care providers as they get a better experience.
As per Ricciardi et al (2019), the digital transformation has a profound impact on the health services. The effect is expected to be stronger in future with better developments and advancements in the field of digital technology. In this article it has been emphasized that evaluating whether the digital services on health contribute towards achievement of the goals of the health system in an optimal way is important. At the service level. This evaluation should take place rather than at the point of digital transformation. This article is a useful work in this field, as it has referred to extensive scholarly works for drawing the inference to the paper. The paper further talks about the decisions for adopting the digital health services at various levels of the system of health care. The decisions are to be taken considering the evidence regarding the performance of the digital services in meeting the health care needs and goals.
In Clarke et al (2019), the authors of the article have considered a broader perspective for evaluating the effectiveness of the digital health care services. The quality, equity and efficiency of the digital health services are judged. The goals of the health system remain unchanged irrespective of the adoption of digitalisation. The governance over the digital transformation is important for capturing the relevant changes. The article has rightly stressed on the fact that while adopting a new approach there could be negative impacts as well. The innovation or new technology may not be able to materialise, reaping beneficial outcomes. Therefore, it is important to evaluate and monitor how the digital health technologies are being introduced, implemented, used and funded.
Klinker, Wiesche & Krcmar (2020) in their article have further focused on the role of the government. The government needs to actively participate in optimisation of the decision-making process at the decentral and central level as well as its related outcomes. The government as stated in the article has to balance its decentralised and centralised activities. The health care system has to prepare itself for adapting to the changes, dealing with digitalisation, upgrading the education and skills, etc. The implementation of digital transformation needs regulatory and financial preconditions. The authors have constantly spoken about the approach and transformation without much focus on the specific challenges that might be faced while implementing the changes.
According to Kraus et al (2021), digitalisation has a strong and enduring effect on health care services. The article aims at evaluating the impact of these digital health care services. The health care organisations and governments might decide to adopt the digital health services. These services could be adopted, used and reimbursed at the level of health care system. The strength of the article is that it concentrates on monitoring the implementation of digitalisation to health care as well as focuses on the consequences of digitalisation. The impacts have been categorised into health care providers, care users, health resource managers and date services. The distinction has also been made between the decentralised and centralised decision-making. The authors of the article have advised to evaluate the services by addressing significant aspects like intended use, technology overview, consequences and costs, etc. The different strategies and key parameters are used for evaluating the digital health care services.
The article by Bucci, Schwannauer & Berry (2019) has proposed certain practical guides and important frameworks for evaluating the digital health services. The authors have reflected upon the WHO and Jasehn frameworks. The decision makers within the health system need different evaluations for understanding the relevance and effectiveness of the digital services. The article has highlighted the European repository and invested in different methodologies for evidence and evaluation of the digital health services. The article is useful as it has illustrated certain specificities on evaluation of digital health services like creation of appropriate policy context, setting the rules of HTA priority, utilising suitable outcome measures, etc. The drawback of the paper is that it has not highlighted the problems of digital transformation in health care. The data sources have been discussed, while taking broader aspects into account like privacy, cybersecurity and market power. The paper has also provided certain recommendations for handling the digital transformation of health care services.
As stated by Herrmann et al (2018), the digital innovation has been introduced to many sectors of the economy. The health care system is not an exception. However, compared to many other industries the health care system has experienced the digital transformation gradually and in recent times. The article has discussed how the digital corporations have entered into the health care sector. The digitalisation of health care aims at integrating the needs of the payers and the decision-makers. The payers expect the costs to remain at a minimal level while the long-term patients expect the improvement in the quality of health care service. This could be possible by utilising digitalisation in health care, making value-based and digital transformation with certain significant implications for the health sector. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the disruptive and digital innovations around health care sector so that the technological enablers, value networks and business models could be identified which aligns with the digital transformation efforts of health care. The paper is a significant work in the field of digital transformation of health care because of the data sources it has chosen and the methodology. The Forbes 2000 and CBinsights have been chosen as the data bases for this research paper. The authors have identified 100 leading technologies, start-up companies and life science active in the sector of health care. The research further analysed the projects of the companies within the health care industry which were subsequently evaluated using different criteria. These include presence of a distinctive and comprehensive business model, delivery of the patient value, provided solutions, addressed consumer needs, etc. The methodological approach of this paper records 400+ collaborations and projects. The authors have identified the patterns which illustrate that the established digital corporations highly depend on the incremental innovations. These innovations are the backbone of their business models. The start-ups however are engaged in exploring the new segments of the market and are flexible in altering their business models. The paper infers that the start-ups provide better scope for disruptive innovation. The start-up companies are quite diversified in their value propositions which address the broader aspects of the health care sector.
From the article of Vial (2021), it can be concluded from the paper that digital transformation provides an opportunity for enhancing the health care outcomes by reducing the costs and improving the quality of health care service. The digital transformation of health care could also bring changes at the economic scale by strengthening the business models and enabling the disruptive innovative models. The digital corporations need to look for better collaborations with the companies that are start-ups. This would facilitate keeping the investment costs at the bay. These collaborations would further keep the balance sheets intact. The regulatory knowledge of the corporations which are established might foster better health care outcomes. The established corporations facilitate the start-ups to take off by kicking off digital disruption within the health care sector.
References
Bucci, S., Schwannauer, M., & Berry, N. (2019). The digital revolution and its impact on mental health care. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 92(2), 277-297.
Clarke, G. M., Conti, S., Wolters, A. T., & Steventon, A. (2019). Evaluating the impact of healthcare interventions using routine data. bmj, 365.
Herrmann, M., Boehme, P., Mondritzki, T., Ehlers, J. P., Kavadias, S., & Truebel, H. (2018). Digital transformation and disruption of the health care sector: internet-based observational study. Journal of medical internet research, 20(3), e9498.
Klinker, K., Wiesche, M., & Krcmar, H. (2020). Digital transformation in health care: Augmented reality for hands-free service innovation. Information Systems Frontiers, 22(6), 1419-1431.
Kraus, S., Schiavone, F., Pluzhnikova, A., & Invernizzi, A. C. (2021). Digital transformation in healthcare: Analyzing the current state-of-research. Information technology assignment Journal of Business Research, 123, 557-567.
Ricciardi, W., Pita Barros, P., Bourek, A., Brouwer, W., Kelsey, T., & Lehtonen, L. (2019). How to govern the digital transformation of health services. European journal of public health, 29(Supplement_3), 7-12.
Sætra, H. S., & Fosch-Villaronga, E. (2021). Healthcare Digitalisation and the Changing Nature of Work and Society. Healthcare 2021, 9, 1007.
Vial, G. (2021). Understanding digital transformation: A review and a research agenda. Managing Digital Transformation, 13-66.
