Economic Evaluation of an Investment in Medical Websites and Medical Web-Based Services
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- 21.1Key Stakeholders’ Identification and Description
- 21.2Relationship between the Medical Websites and the Stakeholders
21 Key Stakeholder IdentificationPrior to the estimation the assessment of the “costs” and the “benefits” of the medical websites offering medical web-based services it is important to identify the relevant stakeholders that affect or be affected by them as well as the relationship among them. This analysis will help the analysts and decision makers to identify the key business actors and try further to address their interests and motivations in order to exploit further successful business results. The first step of this analysis is to identify the key stakeholders/business actors and provide a comprehensive analysis of their main interests and motivations from and towards the medical websites offering medical web-based services as well as the impact that they can have to the success and profitability of these websites. Secondly, “Power versus Interest” grids will be used to array the stakeholders according to their interest on the medical websites business circle and operations that directly affect their sustainability. 21.1Key Stakeholders’ Identification and DescriptionThe major/key stakeholders involved in the medical websites’ business operations are:
The Government/Ministries of Health: Individual Governments, Ministries of Health and official healthcare policy/decision makers can adopt a twin role either as medical website provider or regulator. They are key stakeholders that can have high power and high interest on the medical websites operations and outcomes. Especially in the case that the medical website is provided by the national healthcare provider the Individual Governments, and the Ministries of Health are having the greatest power to affect its sustainability. Moreover they are also particularly interested for the outcomes of the medical website’s operations and services offered since these can affect the efficiency of the services provided by the national healthcare system and the cost-effectiveness of healthcare provision in micro and macro level starting from the smaller healthcare units and spreading to the healthcare system as a whole. Finally the most important factor that makes Individual Governments, Ministries of Health and other official healthcare policy/decision makers interested on the operations of the medical websites provided by them is the fact that they want to provide better, safer and more efficient healthcare services towards the improvement of the “societal wellfarism” of their citizens. Private Healthcare Organisations/Companies/Policy Makers: Private Healthcare Organisations/ Companies/Policy Makers such as pharmaceutical companies and health insurance firm, can provide their own medical websites with applications and content related to their research databases. In this way they can attract more customers, advertise their products and expand their business. Private Hospitals and Hospital networks: These organizations can adopt multiple roles concerning the medical websites. The private hospitals and hospital networks can act as providers of one of multiply interconnected medical websites, can cooperate with various medical websites administrations in order to provide them with the necessary medical expertise or they can use medical websites to promote their services, publications and even expand their business attracting new patients. Individual medical practitioners and Medical Practitioners Associations: As in the case of the private Hospitals and Hospital associations, Individual medical practitioners and Medical Practitioners Associations can cooperate with various medical websites providing them with the necessary medical expertise and at the same time expand their own business and attract new patients. Moreover, they can use the medical websites to promote their publication activities. Furthermore and individual medical practitioners, communities and associations can crucially affect the sustainability of the medical websites, since they are the key players in the modernisation and continuously improvement of healthcare. Non-for-profit Organizations: Non-profit Organizations are also key stakeholders that can provide medical websites. As the previous analysis on the factors that can affect the success and the survivability of the medical websites has shown, most of the successful and highly ranked medical websites were provided by well-known non-profit organizations. These suggests the users tend to use and trust more medical websites sites whose providers have not financial interests and use their gains for greater purposes. Moreover non-for-profit organizations can provide support to governmental or individual healthcare policy makers’ initiatives and /or provide quality certifications to medical websites adopting a role of unofficial regulator. Patients’ Associations and Individual patients/users: Patients’ associations and individual patients care to have the most effective healthcare interventions/services/applications to help them improve their healthcare state and their quality of life. They filter and evaluate the quality comprehensiveness appearance and credibility of the information they receive from various sources since their health is their most valuable possession. Patient associations can put the healthcare system under huge pressure and their demands are not to be ignored. They can certify medical websites increasing their popularity or can instruct people to avoid them dude to misleading and inaccurate content, harming the operation of the medical website. In addition to the aforementioned roles, individual patients and/or patients’ associations can cooperate with accredited medical websites to provide a supportive online community for new users and potential patients. Web-content providers: Web content providers, ICT organizations, knowledge management technology firms, as well as web content management firms and providers, are organizations that can create, promote, manage and support medical websites, in cooperation with governmental or private healthcare policy/decision makers, private hospitals and hospital networks, non-for-profit organizations, individual medical practitioners, communities, patient associations and even e-publishers. These key stakeholders can provide the technical expertise, support and maintenance to the medical websites as they can be responsible for embedding the medical application on the website, the smooth operation of the medical website as well as the platform’s and content update. Finally they are considered to have purely financial interests and motivations. E-publishers: E-publishers can provide their content to the medical websites either in the form of free content or premium content provided to the users with a fee. They will also have a great opportunity to expand their business against the traditional publishers that they don’t realise that their survival is at stake. Similar to the web-content providers e-publishers have also the advantage of promoting and advertising their content as well as ripping financial benefits from the premium content. Finally, they can exploit further the healthcare content distribution channel and focus on narrow and well-defined markets consisted of users/patients with specific characteristics, interests and concerns. It cannot be considered that they have only financial interests and motivations since the healthcare publications aim to evolve and improve the health science by providing updated and informative content to the interested parties. 21.2Relationship between the Medical Websites and the StakeholdersThe following Figure (Figure 30) shows the relationship between the medical websites and their key stakeholders. This relationship diagram is very important for a medical website’s administration in order to manage their stakeholders closely and address their interests, strengthen their motivations and deal with their concerns. The thicker lines represent stronger relationship with these stakeholders in a matter of support, dependency and influence towards the medical websites while the thinner lines represent a weaker relationship. These creates a bidirectional dependent relationship between the medical websites and the key business actors that act as sponsors, promoters, developers, regulators and content and feedback providers. As it is presented is considered that policy-makers, regulators and the patients’ associations have the greater influence, impact and support provision towards the medical websites and thus their relationship is presented with the thickest lines.
Figure : Relationship Diagram The Power versus Interest matrix presented in Figure 31 divides the stakeholders into four categories depending on the level of interest they have for the project’s completion and outcomes and the power that they have to influence to the medical website’s processes, success and sustainability. 
Figure : Key Stakeholder’s Power versus Interest Diagram High influence, interested stakeholders: these are the stakeholders that the medical website’s administrators must fully engage and put more efforts to satisfy their requirement, in order to enhance their success and survivability. High influence, less interested people: A medical website’s administrators should keep these stakeholders satisfied and try best to attract the most of their interest by showing considerations by promoting their interests and addressing their concerns. Low influence, interested stakeholders: A medical website’s administrators should make some efforts to keep these stakeholders adequately informed, communicate to them to ensure that no major issues are arising and value their feedback. These stakeholders can often be very helpful for sustainability and increasing the popularity of the medical websites. Download 1.95 Mb. Share with your friends:
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