Digital Healthcare Platforms Enabling Remote Care Value Creation: The Patient Perspective

Abstract

<p>Remote care is a growing area in healthcare, due to fast technological development offering suitable equipment and platform for distant medical consultation and care. Remote care includes a promise towards care that has the potential to improve the patient's quality of life, prevent unnecessary reception visits, reduce costs, and enable timely and early therapeutic intervention in situations where the patient's need for treatment is increasing. Even though the potential of remote care has been well recognized, many healthcare activities still need to be largely based on traditional appointments. Moreover, there is a need for empirical studies that investigate remote care possibilities and potential obstacles from the perspective of patients. This study investigates the value-creation potential of remote care provided and consumed through digital healthcare platforms from patients' perspectives. This study has an empirical focus, including a qualitative interview study of two remote care digital platforms from Lithuania and Finland.</p>