E-Health Business Models Prototyping by Incremental Design

Introduction

Many health institutions are nowadays involved in e-health projects that envision the application of internet and IT to improve their activity. This is traduced, from one side, in opportunities for multidisciplinary research and, in the other, is a chance to evolve some of the current business models in health.

E-health can become one of the main areas for e-business development in the future years, “thanks to information technologies have been touted as both a solution to rising health care costs and a way to reduce medical errors” (Adler-Milstein, 2009). In fact, IT investment is central to President Obama´s vision for health care reform in the USA and his estimates of the savings from it have been substantial (Adler-Milstein, 2009). A similar view exists in Europe where e-health is one of the central items of the European Commission Agenda. The huge investments expected all and around the world will turn e-health in a fruitful field for opportunities, where final success of many of them will depend on business models innovation.

The work presented in this chapter, based in the collaboration between health institutions, an internet company and a technical university, allow testing a methodology to design and develop internet artifacts for e-health, considering the business model evolution from the beginning.

The work is founded on the desk analysis of current paradigms of design management and relays on a field experience based in the application of the proposed methodology to a 9 e-health prototypes created during the period 2006 – 2009. The last one, a tele-rehabilitation system named E-DIS, is used to illustrate the design methodology proposed.