Applying the concept of social innovation to population-based healthcare

ABSTRACT

Population-based healthcare follows an integrated and regional approach instead of focusing on single individuals and marks a new way of how healthcare is organized and provided. Although promoted by policy-makers, up to date these models are rather an exception than the norm. Still, there are some successful examples. This paper focuses on population-based integrated care programmes in Germany and draws its conclusions on a case study within the German healthcare system. Applying the concept of social innovation, we discuss the potential benefits but also limitations of population-based healthcare and explain why these approaches have not been able to achieve the impact that many stakeholders expected.

KEYWORDS:

• Healthcare
• health economy
• social innovation
• population-based healthcare
• integrated healthcare

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 https://www.si-drive.eu/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration [grant agreement no 612870].