Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
8.4 Customer Knowledge Co-creation and Service
Innovation in Healthcare Organizations
As noted previously, today's medical consumers are more knowledgeable and
they are becoming increasingly vocal about not only their needs but also their
dissatisfaction with services offered by healthcare organizations. In addition, as
mentioned previously, through the Internet, they have gained access to more diverse
and advanced healthcare information, which allows them to actively participate
in their own health care as well as voice their discontentment by forming activist
online groups.
According to the Pew Internet & American life project, 80% of American
Internet users (some 113 million adults) have searched for information on at least
one of 17 health topics (2006 Pew Report). More than 70,000 websites disseminate
health information (Cline & Haynes, 2001; Grandinetti, 2000). While healthcare
websites do offer a rich mine of health information for consumers, their participa-
tion is stoked more by the rapid increase in health-focused online communities and
discussion forums. Prior studies have examined the phenomenon of online health
consumer communities in order to understand why consumers are attracted to these
online health communities (Walther & Boyd, 2002), how these communities are
being utilized (Gustafson, Hawkins, et al., 1999; Gustafson, McTavish, et al., 1999),
the benefits consumers are deriving from their interactions there (Shaw, McTavish,
Hawkins, Gustafson, & Pingree, 2000).
The dominant perspective in research on online health communities has been that
such online groups function mainly as support groups. However, as several recent
examples indicate these online groups are more than just support groups and instead
have become a platform for consumers to share as well as co-create knowledge
(i.e., innovate). Indeed in many respects such online communities become “centers
of research” driven by consumers.
For example, consumers with rare diseases such as 18 q- (a partial deletion
of the 18th chromosome) and pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE) (a rare genetic
disorder) discovered that there was very limited focus on their diseases in the sci-
entific community, partly due to the small number of affected patients (Solowitch,
2001). In the late 1990s and early 2000s, some of these consumers came together
to organize research-focused online health communities, i.e., online communities
focused on researching specific diseases. These communities allowed them to not
only share knowledge and experiences related to the disease with one another
but also to play the role of “citizen scientist” and collaborate in finding cures.
Their activities involved establishing blood and tissue banks, building vast genetic
databases, raising millions of dollars for research, and getting researchers in tra-
ditional research centers to collaborate with them on specific research initiatives.
The early success of some of these activities implies that consumers (patients)
“often know more about the diseases than health care providers” (Solowitch, 2001,
p. 2) and the collective pooling of resources and information by online consumer
groups focused on advancing medical research on particular diseases hold particular
promise (Ferguson, 2002).
Search WWH ::
Custom Search