Title: The Role of Testbed in Healthcare Service Innovation

Biography:

Sabrina Luthfa has her expertise in the field of innovation management and entrepreneurship. Her research interest lies in exploring innovation ecosystem and its evolution in different context of innovation. Currently she is working as a senior lecturer in the University West, Sweden.

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to understand how healthcare service innovation process is managed in the publicly funded healthcare sector. A qualitative study has been done in the healthcare sector in Sweden at Västra Götaland municipal level. From five in-depth interviews the study suggests that an intermediary organization like testbed plays a crucial role in enabling innovation (new service development) in the healthcare service sector in Sweden as it creates a context where the private sector (companies) meet with their match in the public sector such as, healthcare service provider, academic researchers, and municipality. Testbed allows these different actors to place their offers in the table for achieving a common goal thus enable new service creation. However, testbed fails to enable the diffusion of the new service due to (1) regulatory issues which often evolves simultaneously with the new service production over time and (2) organizational resistance to change which often is associated with the fear of replacing the employees with new machines or new ways of treating patients thus considered as socially unsustainable.