What is the value of Medtech Solutions offering in a stressed healthcare environment? 

Medical Technology (Medtech) Industry is moving from a product and/or services based offering model into a value-based model which involves products and services integrated in a solution. This shift is mostly driven by similar moves in the healthcare ecosystem towards a value-based healthcare model where value and its maximisation is the dominant concept. Medtech sees its main Customers in a Business to Business (B2B) context, the Healthcare Providers, either public or private, also shifting towards providing more targeted care models rather than a breadth of services. At the same time, professional and private organizations, either providers and/or advocacy organizations, in an effort to establish a method for defining and measure the value of drugs, devices and treatments, have developed value assessment frameworks. Those frameworks aim at helping physicians and their doctors to identify the value stemming from a healthcare option and make evidence-based decisions to optimize patient outcomes. Moreover, in some cases, they also aim at supporting and providing guidance on the pricing of the various drugs and treatments, facilitating a rational coverage by the payers and the respective negotiations between them and the manufacturers.

Aims of the study

The aim of the research is to investigate and gain deeper insights into value perception by healthcare providers with regards to medical Industry solutions offerings. This study specifically examines how the healthcare providers – public and private – perceive value emanating from Medtech solutions offering with respect to their organizational needs, challenges and goals. The objective is to understand, given the current organizational structure of a specific segment of healthcare ecosystem, such as the healthcare providers, what value is and how value is perceived, and based on this understanding to highlight the foundations and basic pillars which will compose the architecture for building those solutions. Value perception is created cumulatively from different aspects and stakeholders within the Healthcare providers and hence it is crucial to capture the various views. Those views might originate from diverse motives, i.e clinical, patient satisfaction, process improvements, revenue maximisation, regulatory, which may lead to different and even contradictory perceptions. Therefore, the research will explore the diversity of those perceptions, working with different major stakeholders within the healthcare provider organisation, aiming at extracting the patterns of the concepts involved on value perception.

Overall contribution

The contribution of this study will be to illustrate the elements that compose the value perception in the Healthcare providers’ world with regards to Medtech’s solution offering approach. This work will contribute into understanding the value requirements which need to be met by a Medtech’s solution in the healthcare ecosystem as seen through healthcare providers’ angle. In addition, it will both provide a map of the theoretical foundations for designing and configuring solutions offering in the technology-driven healthcare sector. Finally, this work will contribute to the discourse on both value assessment frameworks in healthcare and value perception within the Medtech Industry domain through placing the focus on a more specific framework instead of being abstract around solutions.