11 January, 2022

‘The digital storm’, ‘Digitalisation has accelerated unnecessarily’ and many other headlines appeared during the pandemic. I was also accosted by these same words during the first year of my doctoral research journey in digital health entrepreneurship. As the title of a leading business journal read ‘When Should Health Systems Invest in New Tech’, I decided to cover the topic in my latest presentation at the Advance CRT forum titled ‘Digital Health: The Great Deception or The Great Achievement’.

The current public healthcare system suffers with long waits and unequal access to services. Health sector digitalisation is far slower compared to other sectors and is worsened due to lack of collaboration among various stakeholders in the health sector. Furthermore, the non-availability of unified digital innovations across healthcare has been witnessed from Europe and South Asia. This digital divide can be covered with enhancing collaboration among health entrepreneurs.

Existing research in health entrepreneurship is skewed towards mega health projects and little information is available on how small health entrepreneurs can collaborate through digital means. Moreover, previous literature emphasised health informatics and lacked in explaining innovation adoption and usage in digital healthcare.

Along with the support of my mentors Dr Breda Kenny and Dr Helen McGuirk, I am working to overcome these gaps in research and practice in digital health by bringing people’s perspective to the centre on digitalisation in healthcare. Thus, this research will be based on a participatory action research method. In addition to this, the overall impact of this doctoral research study may result in enhancing innovation in healthcare and may answer the most common deception of ‘When Should Health Systems Invest in New Tech’ - that is ‘NOW’.

By Neelofar Aleem, Doctoral Researcher at Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence, Munster Technological University, Bishopstown Campus.

Supervisory Panel:
Dr Breda Kenny, Head, School of Business, Munster Technological University, Bishopstown Campus.
Dr Helen McGuirk, Head, Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence, Munster Technological University, Bishopstown Campus.