The implementation of a digital business strategy in hospitals: a case study on motives and difficulties of employees

• Autor(a) principal: Ipektsidou, Effrosyni
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/28415
• topic: Digitalization; Ehealth; Healthcare; Digital business strategy; Hospital of the future; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

In recent years digitalization has impacted most industries immensely. Organizations hope to increase their efficiency by improving communication and information exchange along the value chain while simultaneously reducing their costs. Even though the healthcare sector was quite late to follow, nowadays huge investments are made in this area to become patient centric, increase safety and reduce errors. Despite multiple studies analyzing how the digital hospital looks like and why digitalization is pursued, the human factor is often under-appreciated. Therefore, this case study aims to shed light on how employees perceive digitalization and the motives and difficulties in implementation they see. Our interviews with medical, administrative and IT staff of a hospital shows that even though the motives for digitalization are recognized, the impact of digitalization in the healthcare sector remains ambiguous to this day due to the challenges the industry is facing. Privacy issues, rejection on patient- and staff side and a lack of communication and guidance hinder the implementation of a digital business strategy. Additionally, our study reveals that technology is currently leading the process, which should not be the case as in a hospital the patient and therefore the processes that evolve around him should be in the center. Our implications and propositions help in solving these issues.