Enabling value-in-use with digital healthcare technologies: combining service logic and pragmatic constructivism

Abstract

The paper discusses how healthcare providers can enable value-in-use (VIU) using digital technologies in complex healthcare service contexts. Technology providers and public healthcare organizations can have difficulties understanding one another, hindering the possibilities for value-in-use to emerge. Plenty of studies have investigated the value creation in healthcare, often looking at health as value for the patient. We focus on how healthcare providers can create value for themselves to improve their operations and justify the price of new technologies while fully acknowledging the value for the patient as well. The paper uses two in-depth interventionist case studies in Nordic health care: automated screening technology for hospital laboratories and medicine dispensing robotics for home care. We use a novel combination of pragmatic constructivism (PC) and service logic (SL) as method theories to understand the value creation in our cases. Our empirical evidence provide practical examples of how digital technologies can be used to change healthcare practices and how VIU can stem from these changes. As a contribution, we show that healthcare providers can enable value-in-use with digital technologies by altering how care is carried out without hindering what the outcome of the care is for the patient. Digital technologies are there to facilitate such change, but the change still requires that actors involved in care have intention to change how they work. While healthcare bears the responsibility for these changes, technology providers can also have plenty of opportunities for interaction to support or even co-create value together with their customers.