Emerging health technology firms\u2019 strategies and their impact on economic and healthcare system actors: a qualitative study

Mathieu Beaulieu,Pascale Lehoux

doi:10.1186/s13731-018-0092-5

Mathieu Beaulieu, Pascale Lehoux

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s13731-018-0092-5

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Abstract

A growing number of announcements on new and innovative medical devices are reported each year by economic actors. However, very few new technologies are successfully acquired and adopted by healthcare actors. To examine how economic and healthcare system actors perceive entrepreneurs’ strategies employed to respond to and address healthcare system actors’ pressures following firm’s emergence, we gathered data with 20 healthcare system and economic actors using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis. We have determined that the acquisition and diffusion of health technologies are increasingly regulated and must respond to increasing pressures from many actors who see their agency power decline. We have found that political strategies address the pressures from institutionalization of practices and decoupling of the health system and its goals, associative strategies react to the power of key influencers such as investors and medical specialists, and mistrust of marketing actions, normative strategies respond to pressures stemming from the growing need for evidence-based data; finally, identity strategies answer to the fragmentation of a public health system and the heterogeneity of local procurement processes are approached. The results may help medical professionals, decision-makers, and evaluators to understand medical device acquisition and diffusion process better.

Highlights

Study backgroundResearch problem Great advances and achievements have been made over the course of the past six decades in the field of medical technology
When we addressed the subject of interactions between health professionals and industry representatives, “the official and unofficial” (HP-11) ways to interact were discussed
We found that pressures pushing towards and institutionalization of practices and of decoupling of health system and actor’s goals are addressed by political strategies; power of key influencers such as investors and medical specialists, as well as mistrust towards marketing actions, are addressed with associative strategies; pressures originating from the increasing need for evidence-based data are addressed with normative strategies; the low fragmentation of a public healthcare system and the heterogeneity of local acquisition processes are addressed with identity strategies

Summary

Introduction

Study backgroundResearch problem Great advances and achievements have been made over the course of the past six decades in the field of medical technology. With the advent of personal computing in the 1980s, the Internet in the 1990s and the completion of the human genome at the turn of the twenty-first century, the number of companies developing health technology exploded (Baker and Khamsi 2012). These mostly privately developed technologies have become established in both public and private health systems because they respond to health needs expressed by populations, health professionals, and decision-makers (Donabedian 1973). Clinical practice increasingly relies on these technologies while an expanding number of private and public third payers require their formal assessment in the context of an acquisition process (Oortwijn and Van der Wilt 2016)

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