The implementation of digital innovations in the healthcare sector is faced with different barriers and challenges. The complex system of regulations, the lack of interoperability, and highly dynamic interorganisational networks lead to missing widespread adoption of eHealth solutions. Digital platforms can help to overcome these barriers by providing a holistic infrastructure. They create a modularised foundation that innovators can use to create own innovations and provide them to demanders of digital solutions. As intermediaries, they can be accessed both by healthcare professionals and eHealth solution providers. Providers can offer their eHealth services via the platform. Healthcare professionals can use these services to create own interorganisational information systems.
In the field of information systems research, effects and strategies for two-sided platforms are well researched and the potentials of eHealth platforms are also discussed. However, the organisational and technological design and methods for the construction of platforms are fewer questioned. Nonetheless, platform owners can benefit from implementation strategies and architectural guidance to create sustainable platforms and surrounding ecosystems.
This doctoral thesis questions how domain-specific platforms can be designed systematically. Conducting a design-science research process, it develops both a modelling system and the Dresden Ecosystem Management Method (DREEM) to support the development of platforms in different domains. Furthermore, it describes the design characteristics of two-sided platforms in the healthcare sector and provides an evaluation approach to analyse the platforms’ ability to create a viable innovation ecosystem in the healthcare sector.
The doctoral thesis contributes by providing methodical guidance for platform owners and researchers to design and evaluate digital platforms in different domains and improves the understanding of platform theory in the healthcare sector.:A. Synopsis of the Doctoral Thesis
1. Introduction
2. Foundational Considerations
3. Requirements for Design Artefacts and Knowledge
4. Structure of the Doctoral Thesis
5. Conclusion
B. Paper 1 - Governance Guidelines for Digital Healthcare Ecosystems
C. Paper 2 - Revise your eHealth Platform!
D. Paper 3 - Business Model Open ”E-Health-Platform”
E. Paper 4 - Modelling Ecosystems in Information Systems
F. Paper 5 - Designing Industrial Symbiosis Platforms
G. Paper 6 - Management of Digital Ecosystems with DREEM
H. Paper 7 - Guiding the Development of Digital Ecosystems
I. Paper 8 - Towards Maintenance Analytics Ecosystems
J. Paper 9- Sustainability of E-Health-Projects
K. Paper 10 - ISO 11354-2 for the Evaluation of eHealth-Platform
