Engagement Leading to Empowerment-Digital Innovation Strategies for Patient Care Continuity

Digital innovations have started to extend the value chain into the customer decision making process, enabling firms to support two major types of customer services: empowerment prior to customer purchase and engagement during and post-purchase. Service organizations such as health care firms, by virtue of their intense engagement with patients during in-patient care, have a unique opportunity to empower patients’ health care choices once they become outpatients. Understanding patient ecosystems and social support networks during this engagement has important implications for the digital transformation of care-related support to reduce health care costs and also empower patients to selfmanage their health. This research uses a framework to develop alternative care support environments and, using four case studies, to develop a research agenda for digital transformation to support the empowerment of health care consumers by engaging them effectively inside the hospital.