Exploring the effects of eHealth service innovation

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• innovation effects
• eHealth
• government-funded health care
• e-service
• renal failure

Acknowledgements

This study was financed by Stockholm County Council. We thank all employees at Stockholm County Council who took part in the study and all members of the project group who contributed to the study.