Towards business ecosystems for connected health

Digitalisation is seen as a vehicle for restructuring practices of social and health care in Finland. A conceptual model of connected health has evolved over time focusing on bringing together individuals and health professionals by means of ‘eHealth’, ‘telecare’, ‘telemedicine’ or ‘telehealth’ services and data connected via the Internet of Things. Digital transformation has triggered the emergence of innovative connected health services, as well as novel business models in the health and healthcare sector. Additionally, current literature emphasises growing importance of ecosystems in advancing the connected health business. The main reason for this, the increased understanding of business ecosystems would allow companies to create coherent services that would be easier for patients and health professionals (e.g. doctors and nurses) to use.

This paper aims to develop and present a conceptual model for business ecosystem for connected health by mapping service needs for healthcare in the future. For this research, we conducted 16 meetings/workshops related to business models and business ecosystems. We also involved different end-user groups in our research (seven doctor interviews, four workshops with nurses and digital discussions and workshops with 12 parents with sick children).

This qualitative case study illustrates the construct of the Nordic Central Hospital test lab- an innovation ecosystem for connected health service providers. Alongside the broad service map, we demonstrate the logic of value flow between different layers of services in the ecosystem. From an originality perspective, this multidisciplinary paper focuses on the pediatric day surgery to check the scope of connected health, which has not been done before.