Socioeconomic Returns in Digital Health Ecosystems: A Panel on Five European Digital Platforms

Abstract

The recent pandemic reinforced a breakthrough in adopting digital technologies in the healthcare sector: Researchers increased their focus on the use of artificial intelligence, big data analytics, the internet of things, the next generation of telecommunication technology such as 5G and blockchains for uses such as the surveillance, detection, prevention, combat and mitigation of the impact of Covid-19 on the society. While much has been said about the adoption of digital technologies, the value created by and captured from digital platforms that integrate digital technologies to serve a social-purpose-driven ecosystem (such as the healthcare sector) is still veiled. By presenting the results from five simultaneous case studies of digital health platforms in Europe, this symposium explores the role of the embeddedness of digital platforms in social-purpose- driven ecosystem and how such embeddedness affects the value created by and captured from digital healthcare platforms. This symposium is based on a large study that used an explorative multiple-case study method, where both primary and secondary data from five cases of digital healthcare platforms were collected in Finland, France, Lithuania, Spain and Sweden. The multiple-case study illustrates that the value created by and from digital healthcare platforms is affected by the multi-sided nature of the platform itself, however also by the embeddedness of the platform in the social-purpose-driven healthcare ecosystem.