Market Engineering for Electronic Health Services

Various studies have proven the positive impact of e-health solutions on treatment success and health care spending. Utilization of e-health is therefore urgently recommended by German health authorities. However, the diffusion of such technologies is currently very low, despite the availability of the underlying technology. A market failure is a likely reason for the unsatisfying situation, as there are currently hardly regular business models for electronic health services. This paper conducts a case study on telemonitoring, which has significant positive impact on patients with chronic heart failure, to illustrate a market engineering approach for e-health applications. The introduced case study is located in a southern German region, where health insurances and a physician network want to establish a telemonitoring solution. We investigate the socioeconomic, technical and legal environment in order to derive a transaction object and build a transaction service. Patients will transfer vital parameters to physicians on a daily base. Caregivers observe patients´ health status and compile quarterly reports for the e-health provider. The provider distributes the funds of the health insurances according to the compliance among the stakeholders and adjusts the model on an annual base according to the realized savings. The presented solution can be built upon the emerging German infrastructure for telemedicine and be extended to further regions later.