Telemedicine has been acknowledged to improve the quality of healthcare. However, many telemedicine services fail beyond the pilot phase. A literature review on business model components for telemedicine services was conducted. Based on specified inclusion criteria, 22 publications were included in the review. To facilitate the analysis of literature, a business model framework with value as its central focus was proposed. Improvement in quality, efficiency and accessibility of care were identified to be the outcomes of telemedicine, with patients and healthcare personnel being the main users of the services, which are delivered through home, institutional and community-based care. Patients, health providers, vendors, payers and government agencies are actors involved in the delivery of telemedicine services, which require investments in resources like videoconferencing technologies, home monitoring devices and other IT infrastructure. Subscriptions, reimbursements and pay-per-use revenue streams were identified as feasible for commercializing telemedicine services.

Information technology has been suggested to improve patient health outcomes and reduce the burden of care. In this study, we explored the effects of collaborative innovation between caregivers and patients on healthcare delivery as a consequence of the use of an IT-based device by patients with atrial fibrillation. Two cardiologists and two nurses were interviewed while questionnaires were mailed to 75 patients querying them about the use of a home-based ECG for remote monitoring. Findings indicated that the caregivers considered the device to enhance the quality of clinical decision-making. Patients found the device to be useful and felt more involved in their own care. However, the introduction of the device presented work overload for the caregivers. Thus, the facilitation of timely diagnostics and decision-making were not realized. IT is an enabler through which innovation in healthcare delivery can be realized, but it must be integrated into work practices to realize potential benefits.

Information technology has been suggested to improve patient health outcomes and reduce healthcare cost. This study explored the business model and effects of collaborative innovation between caregivers and patients on healthcare delivery through remote patient monitoring by interviewing caregivers and surveying atrial fibrillation patients. Findings indicate that remote monitoring enhanced early detection of potential risks and quality of clinical decision-making with patients feeling more empowered and involved in their own care. The remote monitoring system which consisted of a home-based ECG and a web-based service and was offered free to patients, brought together caregivers, patients, service provider and the government as actors. The introduction of remote monitoring increased the workload of caregivers and facilitation of timely diagnostics and decision-making were not realized. IT is an enabler of innovation in healthcare, but it must be integrated into work processes with a viable business model to realize potential benefits and sustain it. 

The Use Model identifies user groups who will be using services and products the Prosperity4All infrastructure offers. The Model provides developers a tool to keep in mind the full diversity of users while building and designing the infrastructure. 

The report presents results of the Nordic eHealth Research Network, a subgroup of the eNordic Council of Ministers Health group. The network defined and collected data for altogether 49 common eHealth indicators from the Nordic Countries. Health information was quite comprehensively electronically available from other organisations in all the Nordic countries by end of 2014. Intensity of use of nationally stored data remained low except in Denmark. Sweden had best availability of the Patient portal functionalities. Patients used patient portal functionalities rarely except in Denmark. Doctors in Iceland had most positive experiences of their health information systems. Even with limitations, the current work presents a solid basis for working towards the goal of the eHealth network: generating comparable information to support development of Nordic welfare.

Objectives: To provide a survey over significant developments in the area of linking personal health informatics and clinical informatics, to give insights into critical advances and to discuss open problems and opportunities in this area.

Methods: A scoping review over the literature published in scientific journals and relevant conference proceedings in the intersection between personal health informatics and clinical informatics over the years 2010 and 2011 was performed.

Results: The publications analyzed are related to two main topics, namely "Sharing information and collaborating through personal health records, portals and social networks" and "Integration of personal health systems with clinical information systems". For the first topic, results are presented according to five different themes: "Patient expectations and attitudes", "Real use experiences", "Changes for care providers", "Barriers to adoption" and "Proposed technical infrastructures". For the second topic, two different themes were found, namely "Technical architectures and interoperability" and "Security, safety and privacy issues".

Discussion: Results show a number of gaps between the information needs of patients and the information care provider organizations provide to them as well as the lack of a trusted technical, ethical and regulatory framework regarding information sharing.

Conclusions: Despite recent developments in the areas of personal health informatics and clinical informatics both fields have diverging needs. To support both clinical work processes and empower patients to effectively handle self-care, a number of issues remain unsolved. Open issues include privacy and confidentiality, including trusted sharing of health information and building collaborative environments between patients, their families and care providers. There are further challenges to meet around health and technology literacy as well as to overcome structural and organizational barriers. Frameworks for evaluating personal health informatics applications and pervasive health technology are needed to build up an evidence basis.

Changes in healthcare delivery needs have necessitated the design of new models for connecting providers and consumers of services. While healthcare delivery has traditionally been a push market, multi-sided markets offer the potential for transitioning to a pull market for service delivery. However, there is a need to better understand the business model for multi-sided markets as a first step to using them in healthcare. This paper addressed that need and describes a multi-sided market evaluation framework. Our framework identifies patient, governance and service delivery as three levels of brokerage consideration for evaluating multi-sided markets in healthcare. 

The lack of awareness and confidence in eHealth solutions among certain stakeholders creates a barrier for the implementation of e-Health services. The aim of this paper is to explore issues that promote the development and implementation of patient-centered care services for the elderly. An exploratory case study approach is applied to a e-Health monitoring service that was developed and piloted in 38 homes for the elderly in Sweden and the Netherlands. The unit of analysis, concept of 'value-in-use', was used in order to determine how pilot participants felt about a service of this kind benefiting them the most. The findings were then translated into actionable considerations for implementing organizations. The results indicate a need for active participation, technical support infrastructure, mobility demands, and an extension of the concept of trust in e-Health services. The knowledge presented in the study is important for decisions makers, public organization strategists, and policy writers.

This paper uses a qualitative approach, specifically; narrative analysis, to contextualize user's formulation of an understanding of a personalized meal planning service within the ambient assisted living domain. By focusing on how user's, in this case elderly over 65, formed an understanding of a service, and, what they thought valuable in using the service, based on their understanding. The results indicate how user's compare their initial understanding to their experienced understanding, formed during usage, and how this affects their value formulation of specific service aspects. The paper gives not only provides valuable insight into contextualizing aspects of health and wellness services, but to aspects of importance for implementation, by showing how value aspects of services from a user perspective are important to consider during these processes.

BACKGROUND: In recent years, the interest of performing research about and providing e-services for individuals with disabilities has grown significantly. However, there is a knowledge gap in the existing literature on how to stimulate the pre-requisites needed for a sustainable implementation of e-services.

AIM AND METHOD: The study aims to contribute to this knowledge gap by performing semi-structured email interviews with twelve project coordinators from the EU programmes of FP6-IST and FP7-ICT.

RESULTS: The findings showed that knowledge-based and financially based resources, the complexity of the project context, ethical issues and the structural responsibility of the implementation process were key issues in creating a sustainable implementation. Furthermore, users often were not able to perceive added value from the e-services as they seldom were developed beyond prototypes within the research project.

CONCLUSION: The implementation of e-services and/or ICT based applications for individuals with disabilities face similar challenges to the challenges that have been identified when implementing IT-based innovations. Further studies should focus on how users can be involved in the choice and development of e-services they understand as effective, and how to ensure that the implementation strategy will contribute to long-term social inclusion, that is, sustainability.

Information technology can be an important facilitator of social inclusion for people with disabilities into society. However, the goals specified in this area by organizations such as the European Commission have not yet been achieved in their totality. The aim of this paper is to explore which types of information communication technology-based applications and/or digital services have been suggested to facilitate the social integration of people who suffer from different types of disabilities. We performed a literature review that included studies published during a period of 6 years (2010–2016). The results show that, in the data we have had access to, no concrete patterns can be identified regarding the type of technology or technological trends that can be used to support the social integration of individuals with disabilities. This literature review is of relevance to the identification of further research areas and to the identification of issues which have to be considered in the context of the development and implementation of technological innovations that are aimed at promoting or facilitating social inclusion of individuals with disabilities. 

BACKGROUND: It is assumed that e-services support persons with disabilities in their everyday life by improving communication and interaction with healthcare organizations and whilst facilitating their social inclusion.

AIM: The aim of this study is to examine the contribution of e-services in terms of how they diminish barriers and constraints on social inclusion.

METHOD: A literature review was performed, covering the period between 2010 and 2016 (6 years). Only studies that discussed the social inclusion of people with disabilities or presented prototype solutions to this problem were included.

RESULTS: The results of this study show that there is a lack of theoretical framework which can be used to measure the effectiveness of the e-services or innovations in the area of e-services in the contexts that were examined. The existing research studies are normally generic and do not discuss whether the requirements that are imposed on a particular e-service differ depending on (i) type of disability, (ii) the ICT-maturity or skill of the end-user, or (iii) context in which the e-service will be used. In general, previous research in this area claims that e-services do assist people with disabilities access to society (defined as the community in which they live), even when no evidence is actually presented about the impact such services have in this area of the end-user's life.

CONCLUSION: The results of the present study present us with new knowledge about the types of ICT-based innovations and e-services that have been proposed to facilitate the social integration of people with disabilities. 

Today it is a general belief that e-health has a positive effect on costs as well as on quality of health service delivery. Nevertheless, lots of projects failed in the past to clearly demonstrate a positive value proposition. Difficulties arise especially when not only evaluating a single action but a whole strategy for adopting national or provincial e-health. Grounding on the experience of an ex ante evaluation of the Swiss e-health strategy, a first attempt how to practically demonstrate the value of the planned health systemￕs changes is discussed in this article. On the basis of a ￒutilityￓ and a ￒreadinessￓ portfolio, generic allocation decisions are formulated for prioritising investments as well as for identifying weak points in the defined e- health strategy.

Background. Different studies have analysed a wide range of use cases and scenarios for using IT-based services in homecare settings for elderly people. In most instances, the impact of such services has been studied using a one-dimensional approach, either focusing on the benefits for the patient or health service provider.

Purpose. The objective of this contribution is to explore a model for identifying and understanding outcomes of IT-based homecare services from a multi-actor perspective.

Methods. In order to better understand the state of the art in homecare informatics, we conducted a literature review. We use experiences from previous research in the area of informatics to develop the proposed model.

Results. The proposed model consists of four core activities ‘identify involved actors’, ‘understand consequences’, ‘clarify contingencies’, ‘take corrective actions’, and one additional activity ‘brainstorming IT use’.

Conclusion. The primary goal of innovating organisations, processes and services in homecare informatics today, is to offer continued care, better decision support both to practitioners and patients, as well as effective distribution of resources. A multi-actor analysis perspective is needed to understand utility determination for the involved stakeholders.

Electronic medical records (EMR) have been implemented in developed countries since 1972 when the first computer-stored medical record at Wishard Memorial Hospital was designed. However, less seem to be known about EMRs in an African context. The purpose of this paper is therefore to review studies on EMRs implemented in sub-Saharan Africa and to identify benefits and challenges met. Articles available in PubMed, PMC, Scopus, JAMIA and Google were searched through JIBS online library using the search string "EMR systems in Sub-Saharan Africa". In most the papers, EMRs have been implemented in HIV/AIDS settings allowing better monitoring of patients under antiretroviral therapy (ART). EMR systems have also succeeded to increase the number of patients under ART. Moreover, EMRs have improved work processes as they have reduced patients waiting time and enhanced monitoring of medical appointments. However, EMRs have suffered lack of electricity, poor Internet connectivity and computer illiteracy. Today, HIV/AIDS care providers have benefited on the implementation of EMRs and there is a possibility to extend the implementation to other healthcare departments.

Within dominant branches of contemporary research and public debate, applications like Facebook and Twitter are perceived as social media for user participation. Technical possibilities and socio cultural restrictions for user involvement are identified and discussed. Common to both perspectives is that users’ willingness to participate tends to be taken for granted. By studying a case where the users’ response indicates weak willingness to participate, despite the website producers’ efforts to offer social media for participation, this article wish to contribute to a better understanding of the conditions for online participation on the so-called social Web.

UMO is a very popular Swedish health promoting website intended for offering adolescents knowledge and advisory service on sexual, reproductive and psychical health. In 2010 UMO extended the use of social media by opening a Facebook fan page. One of the reasons was to attract new segments of the target audience, another was to make adolescents become fans. More than a year after the start, none of this have developed in accordance with the intentions and expectations. Analyses of data, gained from a content analysis of UMO’s Facebook fan page besides completing interviews with the administrator of the fan page and adolescent users of UMO, indicates a whole set of possible explanations for UMO’s shortcomings.

The study shows on yet another problem with uncritically asserting that the new Web 2.0 and social media benefit participation. What has been overlooked is that obstacles to participation might as well be sought from the participants themselves, and be an active choice by the audience. The bottom line is that mediatization does not describe a fait accompli, and that socio-cultural change in its wake in no way is universal, but rather is characterized by a set of particularities.

E-health two-side Markets: Implementation and Business Models presents empirical models and suggestions that focus on how to remove barriers to deliver online services across borders and how actual barriers affect business models in a two-sided market with regard to eHealth. Technological innovation and business developments in online trade result in fast-evolving markets with the continuous emergence of new products and services, thus requiring a specific approach. This book discusses how to develop innovative and cost-effective implementation strategies for complex organizations, the importance of barriers and facilitators for two-sided markets when implementing e-health services and/or IT based innovations, which pre-requisites have to be achieved in complex organizations that act in two-sided markets when implementing e-services, the ecosystem for implementation of services and innovations in complex organizations, and its effects for business models. This book is a valuable source for researchers in medical informatics, and is also ideal for stakeholders, consultants, advisors, and product designers involved in eHealth services. Presents guidelines that can be used as examples of pros and cons in two-side markets. Provides knowledge that enables readers to identify the changes that need to be considered in budget proposals for eHealth implementation. Includes examples of business models applied in two-side markets, diminishing external effects and failures.

Svensk sjukvård står inför stora framtida utmaningar i att möta ett ökat vårdbehov i takt med att befolkningen ökar och blir allt äldre. Fram till år 2030 beräknas behovet av vård och omsorg stiga med ungefär 50 procent. Sociala innovationer kan vara ett nytt sätt att inkludera den enskilde individen i utveckling och produktion av tjänster inom välfärden för att bemöta denna utveckling.

Rapporten Sociala innovationer i välfärden belyser aspekter som ännu inte uppmärksammats i debatten och fokuserar på förutsättningarna för ett E-hälsokonto och tillhörande E-hälsotjänster.

E-hälsotjänster utvecklas för att förbättra livskvaliteten hos individer och medför samtidigt nya arbetsprocesser och referensramar i välfärdssektorn. I rapporten diskuterar författaren frågan om det finns incitament för entreprenörer och företag att investera i utveckling av E-hälsotjänster. Även ekonomiska, sociala, administrativa eller branschspecifika regleringar på området belyses liksom vilka sociala innovationer som faktiskt efterfrågas. 

The two-sided e-health market is rapidly becoming fundamental for health and social care. Worldwide many different steps have been taken to increase the engagement of consumers with e-health, mainly focusing in the development of novel digital services that increase well-being or tackle some social challenges, such as the lack of qualified personnel, or dwindling resources. At the same time, some effort is also spent on establishing a market in which both sides-e-health consumers and providers-can interact and benefit from with each other (Connell and Young, 2007). In this sideline, there has been a great ambition to introduce "service innovation," "design thinking," and other tenors of the service-dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2008) to open up for new collaborations between private and public actors. Intermediary platforms, provided by regional or national authorities (Aanestad and Jensen, 2011) or private actors such as insurance companies (Scott et al., 2006), become a key coordination infrastructure that allows information to flow within and between the two sides of the market, regulating nontransaction activities and making decisions that determine which group receives support and in which manner, and which kind of price structure will exist to stimulate the two sides to become an active actor of the market.

Making the best choice for an organization when selecting IT applications or eHealth services is not always easy as there are a lot of parameters to take into account. The aim of this paper is to explore some steps to support effective decision making when selecting and prioritizing eHealth services prior to implementation and/or procurement. The steps presented in this paper were identified by interviewing nine key stakeholders at Stockholm County Council. They are supposed to work as a guide for decision making and aim to identify objectives and expected effects, technical, organizational, and economic requirements, and opportunities important to consider before decisions are taken. The steps and their respective issues and variables are concretized in a number of templates to be filled in by decision makers when selecting and prioritizing eHealth services.

The research problem on how to implement changes and innovations in organizations has attracted attention from researchers since the 1970s. But in spite of extensive research, implementation projects in organizations world-wide still fail to a large extent.

The purpose of this report is to present an overview of the pre-requisites for successful implementation of IT-based innovations in complex organizations and its consequent policies. The knowledge produced can be of importance for decision makers, managers and individuals that need to plan how to move from pilot to real world applications and develop strategies that facilitate adoption of the innovation in the whole organization.

To fulfill the purpose of the report, the following research questions were posed:

• Where are implementation studies performed?

• What is the focus of implementation, i.e. what is implemented?

• Which theories, models, frameworks and methods of data collection are used in implementation studies?

• Which are the success factors and barriers to implementation?

A literature review was performed on implementation research during 2009-2014 within the areas of e-health, education, military defense and transport. A majority of the reviewed implementation studies were performed by researchers from USA and Europe. The focus of implementation were policies and information technology-based innovations. Half (approximately 50%) of the reviewed implementation studies were performed inductively, without any guiding theory, model or framework. When theories, models and frameworks were used, they were derived academic disciplines such as economics, sociology, political science organization science, management and information systems and used to explain adoption of policies or information technology. Implementation studies performed in the area of education were guided by theories, models and frameworks to a greater extent than research studies in ehealth, military defense and transport. A majority of the reviewed research studies applied case studies as research approach and semi-structured interviews as the predominant method of data collection.

Common success factors of implementation mentioned in the reviewed studies were to create common understanding of the implementation process among stakeholders, to apply professional project and resource management in the implementation process, to have a strong guiding coalition and change champions and offer end-users of the implementation of the change or the innovation added value. Common barriers were lack of funding and governance, lack of stakeholder management, failed technologies and end-users not perceiving any added value from the change or innovation implemented.

Studies aimed to capture the effects of IT-innovations in health and social care have shown that there is a gap between expected and factual outcomes. Many decision makers feel the need to articulate an ideal end-state for their organiza-tions. Striking the balance between novelty and believability of such an ideal end-state is often tricky and they become neither satisfied with the ideal not the visioning. In this study, we explore the contribution of IT-innovations to health and social care. The results showed that coherence between context and IT-innovation is important to capture effects and outcomes. Being coherent rather than visionary contributes to identify where you are, as an organization, and to capture effects and outcomes that “make sense” in the context in question. The paper makes an exposition from the model building, algorithm design to performance analysis and contributes to the academic prosperity in Intelligent In-formation Management The knowledge generated is expected to provide input when identifying goals that IT-investments are supposed to achieve.

In this study we use the experiences from the service industry and explore pre-requisites of the e-health market which will need to achieve to stimulate both sides of the market (vendors, healthcare organizations, government, institutions, corporations and services organizations) to interact with each other and develop demand driven services and social innovations. The results presented in this paper may be of interest for decision makers, industries (e.g. software or technology designers), small and medium enterprises (SME) and entrepreneurs with an interest in becoming a part of the e-health market, and for consumers (e.g. healthcare personnel and patients) that are willing to influence the market through their choices. The outcomes of the study shown that the role of virtual brokers is essential to the further development of a sustainable e-health market globally because its role as catalyst for interaction between the two-sides of the markets, its effects on the reduction of competitive constrains, its effects on the accessibility to broader network of actors and its effects on the support of public-private exchanges of knowledge and experience.

Business models play an important role in establishing sustainable intermediary platforms for e-health services in two-sided markets. In this chapter, we describe different types of business models and potential revenue and reimbursement schemes based on the Swedish HealthForMe platform. In doing so, we also discuss many of today's open questions and challenges to be addressed by intermediaries operating in two-sided e-health markets. We conclude this chapter by providing an overview of key implications and success factors for owners of such intermediary platforms, and offer an outlook to focal research areas within the context of business models for two-sided markets.

Two-sided markets arise in situations in which there are externalities and in which transaction costs, broadly considered, prevent the two sides from solving this externality directly. In the e-health market, the expansion of the Internet economy has shown to be significant in stimulating the entry of business organizations, many of which are already in two-sided markets.An e-health two-sided market needs to offer sustainable structures, i.e., an ecosystem to support a flexible model that must meet unexpected demand and at the same time be able to handle high demand peaks and long periods if needed. In this chapter we introduce key concepts and factors that are of relevance in two-sided markets. We further discuss the fundamental role of two-side market ecosystem in enabling parties to realize gains from trade or other interactions by reducing the transactions costs of finding each other and interacting. Hence, e-health market ecosystems first and foremost need to be designed for adaptability and network effects. We discuss issues that influence the sustainability and further development of a two-sided e-health market.

Objectives: To discuss how current research in the area of smart homes and ambient assisted living will be influenced by the use of big data. Methods: A scoping review of literature published in scientific journals and conference proceedings was performed, focusing on smart homes, ambient assisted living and big data over the years 2011-2014. Results: The health and social care market has lagged behind other markets when it comes to the introduction of innovative IT solutions and the market faces a number of challenges as the use of big data will increase. First, there is a need for a sustainable and trustful information chain where the needed information can be transferred from all producers to all consumers in a structured way. Second, there is a need for big data strategies and policies to manage the new situation where information is handled and transferred independently of the place of the expertise. Finally, there is a possibility to develop new and innovative business models for a market that supports cloud computing, social media, crowdsourcing etc. Conclusions: The interdisciplinary area of big data, smart homes and ambient assisted living is no longer only of interest for IT developers, it is also of interest for decision makers as customers make more informed choices among today's services. In the future it will be of importance to make information usable for managers and improve decision making, tailor smart home services based on big data, develop new business models, increase competition and identify policies to ensure privacy, security and liability.

In recent years, the use of terrestrial laser scanning(TLS)technique in engineering surveys is gaining an increasing interest due to the advantages of non-contact, rapidity, high accuracy, and large scale. Millions of accurate 3D points(mm level accuracy)can be delivered by this technique with a high point density in a short time(up to 1 million points per second), which makes it a potential technique for large scale applications in engineering environments such as tunnels, bridges, and heritage buildings. Tunnels, in particular those with long lengths, create great challenges for surveyors to obtain the satisfactory scanned data. This paper presents a short history of TLS techniques used for tunnels. A general overview of TLS techniques is given, followed by a review of several applications of TLS for tunnels. These applications are classified as: detecting geological features of drilling tunnels, monitoring the geometry of tunnels during excavation, making deformation measurements, and extracting features. The review emphasizes how TLS techniques can be used to measure various aspects of tunnels. It is clear that TLS techniques are not yet a common tool for tunnel investigations, but there is still a huge potential to excavate.

To analyse the impact of implementation and use of eHealth services is fraught with difficulty, and there is often a gap between expected and identified outcomes. In this paper, we identify innovation effects of an eHealth service by applying a framework that focusses on the expected coherent impacts of implementing an IT innovation and contributes to the body of knowledge on tracking innovation effects of services in eHealth. A case study examines four different care units in a government-funded health-care setting. The results show that the effects in the first two contexts of the framework, the micro level and intra-/interorganisational level, could be clearly identified with regard to the physicians and the organisation. However, effects were lacking in the virtual context when looking beyond the involvement of the stakeholders in the eHealth service. The connections between effects for societal groups and larger societal systems simply could not be made in a satisfactory manner.

Several countries develop strategies and policies to foster the use of eHealth services and stress the importance of business models to develop and implement digital services. Previous research on business models has however mostly focused on the private setting or a healthcare setting with multi-payer or market-based financial systems. In this paper, we explore the use of business models in eHealth as well as the consistency of such a model in a public healthcare setting. The study is performed through a case study of an eHealth service and to which we apply a business model framework. Data have been collected through interviews, documents and project meetings. The results show that all parts of the business model could be identified and provide an overview of the service but no clear guidance on how to reach a sustainable value in the future. It seems that, in the case of public healthcare, there is a need to add the notion of a societal value as well as issues related to future governance for the diffusion of the service to make the business model and the service sustainable.

Innovation in healthcare can be associated with social innovation and the mission to contribute to a shared value that benefits not only individuals or organizations but the society as a whole. In this paper, we present the prerequisites of stimulating a market for social innovations by studying the introduction of a national health account. The results show that there is a need to clarify if a national health account should be viewed as a public good or not, to clarify the financial responsibilities of different actors, to establish clear guidelines and to develop regulations concerning price, quality and certification of actors. The ambition to stimulate the market through a national health account is a promising start. However, the challenges have to be confronted in order for public and private actors to collaborate and build a market for social innovations such as a national health account.

Background: In spite of an increased interest in open innovation and strategies that call for an increased collaboration between different healthcare actors, there is a lack of open innovation research in public contexts.

Objective: This article presents the results of a review regarding the healthcare sector’s engagement in open innovation as well as constraining factors and positive outcomes of open innovation in healthcare.

Method: The literature search focused on papers published in English between 2003 and 2014. Based on specified inclusion criteria, 18 articles were included.

Results: Results reveal that most studies focus on inbound open innovation where external knowledge is integrated with the internal knowledge base at an initial phase of the innovation process. Innovation primarily results in products and services through innovation networks. We also identified constraining factors for open innovation in healthcare, including the complex organizations of healthcare, the need to establish routines for capturing knowledge from patients and clinicians, regulations and healthcare data laws as well as the positive outcome patient empowerment.

Conclusion: The healthcare sector’s engagement in open innovation is limited, and it is necessary to perform further research with a focus on how open innovation can be managed in healthcare. 

Many eHealth initiatives are never implemented or merely endas pilot projects. Previous studies report that organizational,technical and human issues need to be properly taken into considerationif such initiatives are to be successful. The aim of thispaper is to explore whether previously identified challengeswithin the area have remained in the Swedish eHealth settingor whether they have changed. After interviewing experts ineHealth, we present a classification of areas of concern. Recurrenceof previously identified challenges was found, but alsonew issues were identified. The results of the study indicate thatthere is a need to consider organisational and semantic issueson both national and international levels. Legal and technicalchallenges still exist but it seems even more important tosupport eHealth initiatives financially, increase practitioners’knowledge in health informatics and manage new expectationsfrom patients.

In this study, we explore how healthcare professionals in primary care and outpatient clinics perceive the outcomes of giving patients online access to their electronic health records. The study was carried out as a case study and included a workshop, six interviews and a survey that was answered by 146 healthcare professionals. The results indicate that professionals working in primary care perceive that an increase in information-sharing with patients can increase adherence, clarify important information to the patient and allow the patient to quality-control documented information. Professionals at outpatient clinics seem less convinced about the benefits of patient accessible electronic health records and have concerns about how patients manage the information that they are given access to. However, the patient accessible electronic health record has not led to a change in documentation procedures among the majority of the professionals. While the findings can be connected to the context of outpatient clinics and primary care units, other contextual factors might influence the results and more in-depth studies are therefore needed to clarify the concerns.

With an ageing population and limited resources, ICT is often mentioned as a solution to support elderly people in maintaining an independent and healthy lifestyle. In this paper, we describe how ICT can support access to information and rationalization of work processes in a home care context. We do this by modelling the workflow and identifying the possible impact of ICT. The results show a complex process and indicate that the available resources are not used in the best possible way. The introduction of ICT could increase patient safety by reducing the risk of misplacing information about the care recipients and at the same time provide real time information about the care recipients’ needs and health at the point of care. However, to rationalize the work processes there is a need to combine ICT with a changed procedure for handling keys.

With increased patient access to data, healthcare services are experiencing change where patients are moving away from being mere passive actors towards becoming more active and involved participants. In this paper, we explore the role of patient accessible electronic health records (PAEHRs) with respect to this increase in patient involvement. The study was performed as a case study and included nine interviews with patients and a survey that was responded to by 56 patients. Our results show that PAEHRs have a role in the enhancement of patient involvement because PAEHRs (i) foster a more balanced relationship between patients and healthcare professionals and (ii) increase access to information.

The more widespread implementation of electronic health records has led to new ways of providing access to healthcare information, allowing patients to view their medical notes, test results, medicines and so on. In this article, we explore how patients perceive the possibility to access their electronic health record online and whether this influences patient involvement. The study includes interviews with nine patients and a survey answered by 56 patients. Our results show that patients perceive healthcare information to be more accessible and that electronic health record accessibility improves recall, understanding and patient involvement. However, to achieve the goal of involving patients as active decision-makers in their own treatment, electronic health records need to be fully available and test results, referrals and information on drug interactions need to be offered. As patient access to electronic health records spreads, it is important to gain a deeper understanding of how documentation practices can be changed to serve healthcare professionals and patients.