B2B Medical Intermediaries

Jonathan Wareham

ESADE – Ramon Llull Univeristy

Denmark= 5.5 million people

2002-2007

•Global Patient Journal

•13 municipalities – multiple vendors

•Goal = common processes & data structures

•Operations – too many concurrent users & high data transmission

•Design focused on functional design, not architectural (operations)

•Lack of centralized semantics/processes/

•Need of centralized arbiter & political power

2007-2012

•Shared Medication Record

•Common DB

An Old or New Phenomenon?

What we found 1

• Consumer Content Aggregation - consumer education and empowerment

• Professional Content Aggregation – online clinical DB, and diagnostic tools

• Consumer Retailing – health supplies, vitamins & pharmaceuticals

• Patient Management – booking, case data and diagnostics

• Records Management – digitization and management of patient records

What we found 2

• Physician Career - Recruitment, Licensing & Training

• Insurance Claim Processing –clearing and processing of insurance claims, data cleansing & verification, revenue management

• Supply Chain Management – Integration with chosen vendors of medical supplies for purchasing and inventory management

• Procurement tools & markets – Asset acquisition and management/maintenance, resale, compliance

• Application Service Provision – Consolidate application on single platform.

Intermediairies

Intermediation theory

• Information Management: as an aggregator and filter of information (supply and demand)

• Transaction Securitization: controlling and guaranteeing the products delivered and assuring payment to producers,

• Logistics Management: sorting, packaging, storing, stocking and transportation of goods from production locations to intermediate warehouses to consumption sites.

• Market-making/liquidity: by purchasing production before consumer demands are expressed, the intermediary provides producers with some stability and security of demand for their production. Extend credit to both sides of transaction.

Results

Logistics

Management

Market Making

Liquidity

Firm

Age

Pure-Play/

Traditional

Publicly

Traded

Healthcare

Intermediairy

Performance

Information

Management

Transaction

Securitization

NS

NS

NSNS

1.056**

3.055***

0.202*

Klein R. and J. Wareham “Healthcare Intermediaries in Electronic Markets: Performance and Choice of Market Entry Mode,”

Journal of Electronic Commerce Research 9(4) 2008. pp. 243-259.

European Perspective

• Natural Monopolies

• Information Aggregation difficult to defend

• Opportunities to benefit from fragmentation on

national level

• Public/Private transactions or exchange

• European level – even greater

• HL7 or other EU standards