Web 2.0 in Healthcare: State-of-the-Art in the German Health - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Oral Presentation at MIE 2011

Web 2.0 in Healthcare: State-of-the-Art in the German Health Insurance Landscape

Mirko Kühne, Nadine Blinn, Christoph Rosenkranz, Markus Nüttgens

Universität Hamburg | WISO Fakultät | Wirtschaftsinformatik

• 23. International Conference of the European Federation

for Medical Informatics | August 30, 2011 Oslo

MIE 2011 | Mirko Kühne | Slide 2

E-Health and Web 2.0 (1/2)

§ Demographic changes and rising healthcare demand mark the healthcare industry as

• ne of the fastest growing markets worldwide

§ The German healthcare market is the third largest in the world § In the next 10 years, the healthcare market is expected to equal a share of

approximately 15.5% of the German gross domestic product

§ New information technologies (IT) accompany this increasing healthcare demand. § Use of IT in healthcare is often understood as a means for improving workflows in

medical and non-medical healthcare areas through increasing the efficiency of administration, logistics, and therapy processes

§ Depending on the author or audience, new terms for “electronic healthcare” such as

“eHealthcare”, “E-Healthcare”, “E-Health” or “eHealth” are used

§ In this context we can observe a trend to connect healthcare, e-Health, and

Web 2.0

MIE 2011 | Mirko Kühne | Slide 3

E-Health and Web 2.0 (2/2)

§ An emergence and broad adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and approaches in

healthcare can be observed

§ Web 2.0 is generally associated with technologies that facilitate interactive

information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web

§ Web 2.0 applications, particularly wikis, blogs, and podcasts, have been increasingly

adopted by many online health-related professional and educational services

§ The Internet is increasingly used to search for health-related information such as

treatment of diseases

§ Healthcare providers such as health insurers, health professionals, patient

• rganizations, or the pharmaceutical industry are major suppliers of information

Ø Against this background, our research examines the adoption and implementation

• f Web 2.0.

Ø As a first step in our research, we conducted a complete inventory count in the

German health insurance landscape.

Ø We analysed the website of all German health insurance provider regarding their

provision of Web 2.0 applications.

MIE 2011 | Mirko Kühne | Slide 4

Web 2.0 in the German Health Insurance Landscape

§ In the German healthcare system, health insurances play a highly relevant role. § The German health insurance reform of 2007 requires everyone living in Germany to

be insured.

§ There are two main types of health insurance – the public health insurance, which is

also known as sickness funds, and the private health insurance

§ Approximately 85 % of the population is member of one of the 152 public health

insurance

§ Public officers, self-employed people/entrepreneurs, and employees with a gross

income above 49,500 EUR per year are usually privately insured by one of the 46 private insurances.

MIE 2011 | Mirko Kühne | Slide 5

Methodology and Research Design

§ Method of “third-party web assessment”, application of “mystery user” approach § Web 2.0 Framework developed by Ganesh and Padmanabhuni (2007) § They developed a generic conceptual framework in order to structure the Web 2.0

landscape

§ A group of experts from the healthcare domain suggest the following technologies as

relevant for the evaluation

§ We analysed all 46 private and 152 public health insurances (198 complete data sets)

Content Collaboration Social Networks RSS Feeds Blog Facebook Podcats Wiki Twitter Chat Xing Social Tagging Social Networking

MIE 2011 | Mirko Kühne | Slide 6

Results (1/3)

§ Content: RSS-Feeds are stronger used by the Public Insurances – Podcasts by the

Private Companies

§ Collaboration: Public Insurances share a platform for Chat and Forum § Networks: Private Insurances are stronger organized in Social Networks

MIE 2011 | Mirko Kühne | Slide 7

Results (2/3) – Number of used Applications

§ Regarding the number of used Web 2.0 applications (Content and Collaboration), we

• bserved that public health insurances have more applications in use than private

insurances.

§ On average, public insurances apply 3 applications – in contrast, private health

insurances apply 2.5 applications.

MIE 2011 | Mirko Kühne | Slide 8

Results (3/3) – Number of used Social Networks

§ With an average of 1.7, the private insurances are stronger organized in one of the

three examined Social Networks:

§ 52 % of private insurances use one, § 26 % two and § 22 % all three Social Networks. § The public insurances use on average 1.4 Social Networks: § 66 % use one, § 29 % two and § only 5 % all three

MIE 2011 | Mirko Kühne | Slide 9

Discussion (1/2)

§ Our findings provide first answers about the State-of-the-Art of the adoption and

implementation of Web 2.0 technologies in the German health insurance landscape.

§ There is a wide spread diffusion and adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and Social

Networks

§ We could show huge differences between the two insurance types regarding the

adoption and implementation of the applications.

§ Even between the companies within their respective insurance types we observed

large differences from “no use” of (no Web 2.0 applications are used) to “strong use” (7 applications are used).

§ But how can the differences be explained? What aspects influence the adoption

and implementation of Web 2.0 applications?

§ At present, there is no literature on the disparity of the differences in the adoption

• f IT and even not in the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies by public and private

insurances.

MIE 2011 | Mirko Kühne | Slide 10

Discussion (2/2)

§ Based on our research and interviews we suppose that the disparity of the

differences is grounded in the business models of the two insurance types.

§ Private insurances are focusing on product sales whereas public insurances are

primarily driven by the differentiation to other public insurances – because the product “public health insurance” with its services is unified by government.

§ We assume that public insurances try to differentiate themselves to others by

providing special services such as Chats with experts or providing health information by RSS Feeds.

§ In contrast, the private insurances try to acquire new customers in Social Networks

• r explain their products via Podcasts.

§ To explain the differences regarding the adoption of Web 2.0 applications, we started

a questionnaire to managers of health insurance companies to uncover the driving factors of Web 2.0 adoption

§ The size of the organization has been shown by several studies to impact the

adoption of new technologies.

§ Therefore we heading to analyse official statistics about the number of insured

people per company and compare these statistics with our results.