| dc.description.abstract | Healthcare in the UK is becoming more expensive and less efficient. The from origin public National
Health Service has started to invite companies into the system to try and tackle these problems, for
example by providing digital health solutions. This privatisation is often viewed by the public as a
threat to free healthcare, but also brings significant opportunities. Digital health is suggested to
streamline healthcare processes, lower the pressure on healthcare professionals, and provide easy
access for healthcare consumers. In its development, the digital health market is facing challenges
that need to be overcome to serve its part in healthcare. Taking the case of digital health primary
care platforms in Greater Manchester, this research focused on what barriers market actors
experience while forming the market and proposes policy trade-offs to tackle these.
Frameworks of Boon et al. (2022) and Flanagan et al. (2022) were used to specify the digital health
market formation processes and regional industrial policy trade-offs. A Historical Event Analysis
(HEA) and interviews were used to gather and analyse data. The HEA clarified the context of the
research by connecting events from 2012 to 2022 to market formation indicators and aimed to show
an either inhibiting or facilitating function to the process. Interviews were conducted with an
interview guide derived from the HEA narrative and aimed to validate and add to the narrative while
also exploring the factors that influence developments in the digital health market in relation to the
isolated events.
The HEA and interview outcomes led to the following barriers: SME and multinational market entry
inhibition by strict and changing regulation, expensive and time-consuming evidence gathering value
proposition for gaining legitimacy, healthcare digitalisation causes health inequalities to worsen, lack
of integration into GPs’ workflow and IT systems as a barrier of adoption, healthcare digitalisation
causes health inequalities to worsen, and data usage by companies is ambiguous to the consumer.
As of the upcoming implementation of Integrated Care Systems, local actors will increasingly gain
legitimacy to exert influence on their region through decision-making in healthcare. This research
suggests shifting the attention in policy to a narrower framing of the problem, a more diverse network
and customization of the institutions to the actors in digital healthcare. | |
