Digital Health Ecosystems
A persistent challenge on the way to a smart healthcare system is the fragmentation of the health information system landscapes. Not uncommonly, one gets the impression that information systems are not (yet) able to interlock in a way that inter-organizational care scenarios or inter-sectoral collaborations would require. The goal of holistically harmonized IT systems is being pursued by developing digital health ecosystems.
Researchers are tackling this mammoth task from a variety of perspectives. From a bottom-up approach, digital health applications (in Germany known as DiGA) are considered one of the most important innovations in the German healthcare system. Nevertheless, many DiGA have a specific orientation and are not tailored to the health care context in an integrative manner. Current research should therefore address the question of how the integration of different DiGA could be implemented in a more holistic treatment context. Due to this, the call for more interoperability is repeated more and more often. In addition to technical hurdles, including semantics, syntax, and aspects of the IT infrastructure, non-technical issues from regulatory, economic, and organizational perspectives are also coming into focus. While innovators are looking for support in these management tasks, from a top-down perspective, the question arises as to how legal framework conditions can be designed so that adequate care and business models can be developed and realized, for example, using open platform architectures. These and other research tasks can, amongst others, contribute to i) harmonizing the ambulatory care sector with individual healthcare, ii) building bridges between healthcare and public health services, and iii) creating learning ecosystems with valuable research data infrastructures.
Topic areas
Within the research line of digital health ecosystems, the researchers in our Digital Health group especially address the following topics:
- Development and evaluation of digital health applications
- Interoperability of digital health applications
- Digitization of public health services
- Platform business models and research data infrastructures
- Digitization in nursing care
In each topic, aspects of model-based analysis and the design of digital solutions, as well as their evaluation, are addressed.
Selection of key Projects
- Digital Progress Hub Health "MiHubX"
- Health stations for home usage & Interoptimeter
- EvalDiGe & ReDiGe
Selection of main publications
Benedict, Martin; Schlieter, Hannes: Revise your eHealth-Platform! – Design Principles for a Descriptive Case Study. In: American Conference on Information Systems (2017) Link to Paper
Schlieter, Hannes; Benedict, Martin; Burwitz, Martin: Geschäftsmodell Offene „E-Health-Plattform“ – Anforderungen und Potentiale. In: Innovationen in der Gesundheitswirtschaft – Theorie und Praxis von Businesskonzepten – 10 Jahre B. Braun-Stiftung Mentoringprogramm (2017), S. 170–195, Bibliomed, Melsungen
Benedict, Martin; Schlieter, Hannes; Gißke, Carola: "Management Digitaler Ökosysteme mit der DREEM-Methode am Beispiel einer Virtual-Coaching-Plattform”. In: HMD – Praxis Wirtschaftsinformatik (2019) 56:857–875
Benedict et al. 2019: A Reference Architecture Approach for Pathway-Based Patient Integration
Benedict 2018: Modelling Ecosystems in Information Systems–A Typology Approach. In: Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik (2018) Link to Paper
Scheplitz 2022: Ensuring Socio-technical Interoperability in Digital Health Innovation Processes: An Evaluation Approach