A Business Perspective

Abstract

Major trends are impacting healthcare such as the access to a larger number of people, the growing demand for better quality of care, the ageing of the population in Europe; all of them are causing skyrocketing healthcare costs. To cope with these challenges improvements in quality and efficiency are needed and new organizational models with major changes in the way healthcare services are organized and delivered to the citizens have to be introduced.

Healthcare has to move from treatment to prevention, from a “clinical-centric” to a “patient-centric” approach where the citizen is motivated and empowered to manage his own health.

ICT will play an important role in this new scenario and this healthcare’s evolution is attracting the attention of the industry. The digital revolution is impacting healthcare too. The new frontier of the mobile healthcare (m-health) will contribute to bridge the gap between the healthcare system and the citizens and will increase the level of patient/caregiver connectivity.

From a business perspective e-health represents a market still in a nascent phase with a lot of barriers and challenges but has the potential of becoming the third largest industry in the healthcare sector. Mainly in this initial phase, small and medium enterprises, technology-driven companies, innovators could have great opportunities.

This chapter deals with the specificity of the e-health business; it identifies business opportunities, investigates on the existing barriers and analyses possible business models and the methodologies for a socio-economic assessment of e-health.