Healthcare entrepreneurship: current trends and future directions

Purpose – The goal of this article is to provide an overview of healthcare entrepreneurship, both in terms of its current trends and future directions. Design/methodology/approach – The article engages in a systematic review of extant research on healthcare entrepreneurship using the scientific procedures and rationales for systematic literature reviews (SPAR-4-SLR) as the review protocol and bibliometrics or scientometrics analysis as the review method. Findings – Healthcare entrepreneurship research has fared reasonably well in terms of publication productivity and impact, with diverse contributions coming fromauthors, institutions and countries, as well as a range of monetary and non-monetary support from funders and journals. The (eight) major themes of healthcare entrepreneurship research revolve around innovation and leadership, disruption and technology, entrepreneurship models, education and empowerment, systems and services, orientations and opportunities, choices and freedom and policy and impact. Research limitations/implications – The article establishes healthcare entrepreneurship as a promising field of academic research and professional practice that leverages the power of entrepreneurship to advance the state of healthcare. Originality/value – The article offers a seminal state of the art of healthcare entrepreneurship research.