Abstract
BackgroundSocieties around the world are aging. Widespread aging creates problems for social services and health care practices. In this light, research on connected health (CH) is becoming essential. CH refers to a variety of technological measures that allow health care to be provided remotely with the aim of increasing efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and satisfaction on the part of health care recipients. CH is reshaping health care’s direction to be more proactive, more preventive, and more precisely targeted and, thus, more effective. CH has been demonstrated to have great value in managing and preventing chronic diseases, which create huge burdens on health care and social services. In short, CH provides promising solutions to diseases and social challenges associated with aging populations. However, there are many barriers that need to be overcome before CH can be successfully and widely implemented.ObjectiveThe research question of this study is as follows: How can CH facilitate smart, remote, and targeted health care? The objective is to identify how health care can be managed in more comprehensive ways, such as by providing timely, flexible, accessible, and personalized services to preserve continuity and offer high-quality seamless health care.MethodsA qualitative approach was used based on 60 multistage, semistructured stakeholder interviews.ResultsThe results can be divided into two functions of CH: ecosystem and platform. On the one hand, the interviews enabled the authors to develop a stakeholder classification and interaction diagram. These stakeholders interacted sequentially to provide technology-based content to end users. On the other hand, interviewees reflected on how CH serves as a platform to address remote monitoring and patient self-management. In the Discussion section, three innovation strategies are discussed to reflect the manner in which CH promotes smart, timely, and precise health care.ConclusionsThis study indicates that it is essential to continually revise CH business models, given the ongoing and rapid changes in technology across groups of CH stakeholders. We also found that global trends toward smart, timely, and precise health care shape what individuals expect from products and services, providing firms with unique opportunities for growth.
Highlights
Health professionals and institutions demand that health care services be more accessible, of a higher quality, and more efficient, so they often turn to connected health (CH) [2]
According to the word cloud of Multimedia Appendix 1 it is noticeable that keywords such as care, business, data, system, model, time, technology, government, and management were most frequently mentioned in the interviews
The Changhua Christian Hospital (CCH) viewed global market trends as opportunities for innovation and renewal: We are proactive in absorbing new practices and exploring global trends...We discovered that our customers tend to follow the concept of “aging in place,” which echoes the global trend. [Participant #55]
Summary
As traditional health care models are not fully equipped to face the unique challenges of providing health care for an aging society, innovative practices are being proposed and developed to decrease the pressures of widespread aging. Through self-management and remote monitoring platforms, connected health (CH) has been offered as a new technology-based model of health care delivery that presents a promising solution for future, aging-oriented health care [1]. The first factor is related to the widespread tendency to pursue excellence in health care through the promotion and monitoring of health care services’ quality, efficiency, safety, and level of customer service. Widespread aging creates problems for social services and health care practices. In this light, research on connected health (CH) is becoming essential. We found that global trends toward smart, timely, and precise health care shape what individuals expect from products and services, providing firms with unique opportunities for growth
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