eHealth Market Players

Walid Elias Kai
Universite Paris Dauphine, France

Abstract: Due to the economic and social priorities afforded health services in the United States, research on new delivery modalities such as the Internet is gaining in popularity. Claims of the Internet's potential range from a promise to revolutionize the fundamental way health care is delivered to a tool for empowering patients through enhanced interaction with providers (Rice, 2001). Even though a great amount of attention has been given to e-health activity, the preponderance of publications to date has focused on the Internet as a source of health information. However important this form of e-health is, this type of service simply does not face the same constraints that must be addressed by those actually delivering health care services or tightly regulated pharmaceutical products. In this paper, we examine e-health by focusing explicitly on the delivery of health care products and services.

Our examination of e-health activity is guided by two broad research questions. First, we ask what the potential is for the development of online health care services by examining its potential in major health care service and product sectors. Second, based upon case studies of two online health service firms, we seek to understand the emerging strategies of firms that are attempting to enter the health care market with an entirely online approach. Our examination of current e-health trends, as well as our two case studies, demonstrates the tremendous potential for health-related commercial activity on the Internet. However, our examination of the barriers facing ehealth from the US health system also pointed out the almost insurmountable challenges. We therefore conclude that a "click and mortar" model may perhaps be the optimal strategy for e-health. The Evolving ePrescribing Market Players: Strategies for Successful Partnerships begins by examining the activities of various healthcare players in the drive to increase physician adoption of handheld devices and ePrescribing applications, evaluating the most likely outcome of these ventures.

The brief examines physician perceptions of pharmaceutical manufacturer-sponsored ePrescribing services, deciphering the feasibility of this strategy. Strategies for Successful Partnerships continues with an analysis of the vendor market, including the viability of various business models and current partnerships and ventures involving pharmaceutical manufacturers. The future decoded section discusses the potential impact of ePrescribing applications on physician behavior and the emergence of data products, both of which are likely to result in ePrescribing and related handheld applications becoming established channels to communicate with physicians. The Partners should be chosen based upon not only the strength of their technology, but on the viability of their business model. Physicians in the US are the most positive about using ePrescribing tools sponsored by pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Conclusion: Physicians are being targeted by strategies initiated by various healthcare players with the intent of increasing the penetration of handheld devices and ePrescribing applications. Such targeting will result in both increased adoption and the creation of a new and powerful channel for impacting prescribing decisions by reaching physicians as they are making these decisions. Additionally, increased ePrescribing market activity will result in the creation of data products with increasing statistical significance over the next three years. The combined result of an improved ability to target physicians at the point-of-care and to collect data on their prescribing decisions will be the emergence of ePrescribing and related handheld technologies as lasting channels to communicate with physicians.