Special Issue "Open Innovation in Sustainable Health Systems: The Role of Healthcare 4.0"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Health and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2022.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Luisa Pellegrini
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Energy, Systems, Territory and Construction Engineering, University of Pisa, 56122 Pisa, Italy
Interests: open innovation; technology assessment
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
Dr. Simone Lazzini
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Economics and Management, University of Pisa, 56124 Pisa, Italy
Interests: health technology assessment-management (HTA-M); accounting and managerial control in healthcare organizations
Dr. Salvatore Tallarico
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Economics and Management, University of Pisa, 56124 Pisa, Italy
Interests: public management; health technology assessment-management (HTA-M)

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged the healthcare systems’ Sustainability. This is an issue because, even when the Covid-19 pandemic will be over, the Sustainability of the health systems will be potentially threatened by possible new crises: “the greatest risk to humanity is not nuclear war but infectious viruses that could threaten the lives of millions of people” (Bill Gate speech in 2015).

Open Innovation (OI) can help in achieving and maintaining the social and economic Sustainability of the health systems as well as of the firms and institutions that belong to these systems, not only during crises times (Brem et al., 2021), but also during ‘business as usual’ times.

For instance, considering Sustainability at the social level, OI can help to effectively and timely cope with the societal challenges connected with crises. Indeed, while leveraging on a multiplicity of brains and while offering ways to shorten the innovation process (from idea generation/selection up to the commercialization), OI allows reducing the time needed to achieve innovative solutions able to combat the crises and counteract the health challenges the transmission of the viruses imply (Chesbrough, 2020). But OI, while involving users and physicians in the development of products also in 'business as usual times’, can help to set up the appropriate conditions for a rapid introduction and diffusion of technologies (Davis et al., 1989) during disaster times, when firms, institutions and governments look for health technologies that are readily implementable, flexible or easily reconfigurable, with no additional time, costs and no resistance to adoption. This is particularly important for the social Sustainability of the health systems: OI during ‘business as usual times’ sets the foundations of the Sustainability of the healthcare provision also during crises times.

Open Innovation can also support the health systems’ Sustainability at the economic level, allowing to cope with the growing concerns about the limited resources (Barron et al., 2015). Indeed, the possibility to collaborate with external partners during the innovation process diminishes the need to maintain large, costly internal R&D programs to generate new products. This, on its turn, on the one hand provides firms with greater opportunities in terms of sustainable competitive advantage, and, on the other, allows greater affordability of new products/services and savings for the health systems. As an addition, an OI approach brought about even after the introduction of technologies in the market (e.g., the interaction between manufacturers and end users in incrementally innovating medical devices after their commercialization) allows incremental innovations introduced after the launch in the market to have a concrete impact not only on the effectiveness of the technology, but also on its costs (Tarricone et al., 2017).

Within this scenario, digital technologies play a pivotal role (Bonollo et al., 2016). For instance, Healthcare 4.0 technologies – i.e. data-driven digital health technologies such as smart health, mHealth (mobile health), wireless health, eHealth, online health, medical IT, telehealth/telemedicine, digital medicine, health informatics, pervasive health, and health information system (Jayaraman et al., 2020) - can support the impact of OI on Sustainability. By allowing the health system’s stakeholders to digitally connect their resources and information, communicate and collaborate, while also tapping into external knowledge sources during the innovation processes, Healthcare 4.0 allows firms to efficiently and effectively innovate. This way, on the one hand, greater efficiency allows keeping prices low, so positively contributing to the Sustainability of the health systems at the economic level. On the other hand, innovation and the connected technologies supporting healthcare activities can contribute to Sustainability at the social level, allowing people to access novel therapies and adequate health care levels, less related to hospitalization alone.

However, to the best of our knowledge, the role of OI for the Sustainability of the health systems is not thoroughly understood, neither at the economic, nor at the social levels. As an addition the role of digital technologies in supporting the relationship between OI and Sustainability is not clear. It is for these reasons that our Call for Papers is requesting submissions that highlight and reflect the current state-of-the-art in terms of practice and research for this important and evolving scenario. Potential topics and research questions for the special issued may include but are not limited to:

  • How does Open Innovation help in achieving and maintaining the Sustainability of the health systems?
  • How does Open Innovation help in achieving and maintaining the Sustainability of firms and institutions that operate in the health systems?
  • How does healthcare 4.0 support OI in order to achieve and maintain the Sustainability of the health systems?
  • How does healthcare 4.0 support sustainable open innovation?

References

Barron, A.J., Klinger, C., Shah, S.M., Wright, J.S. (2015), A regulatory governance perspective on health technology assessment (HTA) in France: the contextual mediation of common functional pressures, Health Policy, 119(2), pp.137-146

Bonollo, E., Lazzini, S., Merli, M. Z. (2016). Innovations in accounting information system in the public sector. Evidences from Italian public universities. In Strengthening information and control systems, Springer, Cham, pp. 199-216.

Brem, A., Viardot, E., Nylund, P.A. (2021), Implications of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak for innovation: Which technologies will improve our lives?, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 163, pp. 2-7.

Chesbrough, H. (2020) To recover faster from Covid-19, open up-Managerial implications from an OI perspective, Industrial Marketing Management, 88, pp. 410-13.

Jayaraman, P.P., Forkan, A.R.M., Morshed, A., Haghighi, P.D., Kang, Y.B. (2020). Healthcare 4.0: A review of frontiers in digital health, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 10(2), pp. 1-23.

Tarricone R. Callea G., Ogorecv M. and Pevolnik Rupel V. (2017), Improving the Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Medical Devices, Health Economics, 26(Suppl. 1), 7–92.

Dr. Luisa Pellegrini
Dr. Simone Lazzini
Dr. Salvatore Tallarico
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • digital technologies
  • Innovation

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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