Business Concepts of Systemic Service Innovations in e-Healthcare 

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摘要:

It is widely accepted that business models are key to the success in service innovations, which require the formation and specification of a good and meaningful business concept right from the beginning. Taking into account the systemic nature of e‐healthcare services, the paper develop a research framework and present four case studies gathered from Taiwan’s innovative e‐healthcare programs, which together may help to unveil the key ingredients of the business concept required for innovative e‐healthcare services. Quite often, demand for e‐healthcare services is associated with the healthcare and wellbeing need of the elderly and/or people with chronic diseases. However, such a view can be oversimplified. Instead, when paying attention to a distinction between direct demand and “derived” demand, one can better deal with such an issue of who is to pay. In addition, to live up to the promise of the value proposition defined, systemic e‐healthcare service innovations require dealing with a variety of states (objects) at the same time and in a manner consistent with the value proposition. The results of our case studies suggest that the needs of the cared may have different shades of meanings, in terms of value proposition. There are such patterns as “nice‐to‐have” and “had‐better‐have” (if not “must‐have”), especially regarding pain point. Differences between these patterns imply such issues as to how crucial the service is to the users and customers and their willingness to pay. In addition, when changing business concept from one type to another, the focal firms often have to reconfigure their business models. In other words, inter‐organizational relationships in capabilities and core competencies can influence organizational boundaries and hence the business model involved in forging systemic service innovations. Keywords: systemic service innovation, business concept, business model, e‐healthcare