Sustainable Value Co-Creation and Digital Health: The Case of Trentino eHealth Ecosystem

This paper aims to develop a theoretical framework based on recent service theories, such as service-dominant logic and service science, and on the concept of service ecosystems. The identification of the main elements of service ecosystems allows for pinpointing the main drivers for sustainable value co-creation, which is intended as the creation in the long run of new service solutions set up with and for end-users to guarantee a better service for the whole society. Given the high interactivity required in the relationship between players involved in digital health services, we decided to apply the developed framework to eHealth, to re-read the eHealth sector as a service ecosystem. The model is tested through a case study represented by digital healthcare in the Autonomous Province of Trento, which represents a best practice in this sector. The results confirm the presence of the main elements of the service ecosystem (actors, resource integration, technology, institutions) in the eHealth sector and show how their integration favours the creation of new resources, new uses of technology and new institutions that produce innovation and sustainable value co-creation. The originality of the work lies in the reconceptualization of the digital health sector from a new perspective based on the assumptions of service-dominant logic, that allow us to analyze the eHealth ecosystem in a holistic and system view.