Patrick Wilhelm and Nicolas Neuwirth
ERNI Switzerland
Healthcare industry
In the healthcare industry, the various sources of Big Data include hospital records, patient records, examination results, and devices that are part of the Internet of Things. Biomedical research has also generated a large amount of data related to public healthcare. This data must be properly managed and analysed to provide meaningful information. Otherwise, finding a solution quickly through Big Data analysis is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Each step of Big Data processing comes with various challenges and only the use of high-end computing solutions for Big Data analysis can overcome these hurdles. Therefore, in order to provide appropriate solutions to improve public health and to generate and analyse Big Data systematically, healthcare providers need to be equipped with proper infrastructure. Effective management, analysis and interpretation of Big Data can change the rules of the game by opening up new paths.
What is a business ecosystem? A business ecosystem relies on three pillars to exist and grow: sustainability, self-regulation & evolution. In detail, this means that resources are efficiently used and reused in a symbiotic relationship between ecosystem participants without external influence. Based on a common set of rules & norms defined mainly by competition & innovation, the ecosystem regulates itself and avoids unilateral control by system participants or high dependencies on outsiders. This clustered area of competition, as in evolutionary processes in nature, forces experimentation within or across the ecosystem, leading to new innovations.
What is a business ecosystem?
Solution Ecosystems Have a core company as the orchestrator. Independent vendors & complementary themes contribute to the solution. The customer has an active role and influences the offerings with their buying decisions.
Let us now introduce you to our journey as patients. We have a variety of increasingly digital touchpoints that are combined with different actors depending on our current health needs and treatment phases. This can range from personal diet tracking in the prevention phase to telemedicine consultations by a doctor in the therapy phase, or remote group therapy sessions offered by the clinic in the rehabilitation phase (see details in the figure above). It can be observed that digitalisation is increasing connectivity between stakeholders and also giving them direct access to the patient. This generates huge amounts of value-added data, redefines current stakeholder roles and activities and generates new business models. All these factors are capable of transforming the entire domain into a healthcare ecosystem with a variety of customer-centric value propositions towards the “prosuming” patient and changing the strategic positioning of participants within the system.
What are the influential microeconomic trends behind such a healthcare ecosystem?
According to the National Research Council, building on advances in pharmacogenetics and targeted therapy, precision medicine aims to integrate multiple data sources to “tailor medical treatment to each patient’s unique characteristics.” The evolution of precision medicine is based on the collection of big data, including electronic health records (EHRs), common clinical measurements, environmental data and lifestyle data, which will also be collected over time via mobile devices and apps. The goal is to aggregate and analyse the data to provide value to the customer.
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