Digital health at Central Lisbon University Hospital Center: strategic reflections and value proposition

Abstract

Digital health emerges in the context of technological advancement, responding to the challenges of healthcare systems based on safe, quality healthcare services, offered in a timely manner, and in an efficient and effective way. However, digital health also brings challenges that are essentially related to change management within organizations. Based on problem structuring methods, this study sought to investigate the digital health topic in the specific case of Central Lisbon University Hospital Center (CHULC in Portuguese), aiming to reflect on initiatives that enhance digital health benefits within this organization and that contribute to its digital transformation. For this purpose, interpretive structural modeling was used to identify and understand the cause–effect relationships between determinants of digital health in this context, involving CHULC in the strategic reflection on the subject through a collaborative and constructivist approach. The main results include a set of actions formalized to enhance the center's digital health value proposition.

Enhancing hospital resilience and planning capacity in scenarios of crisis using group decision‐making and interpretive structural modeling

“…However, the existing communication mechanisms still did not support dialog between varied fields of study. The absence of scholarly interactions impeded the formation of multidisciplinary theories in resilience research on challenging scenarios, even for hospitals with good reputations for valid investigations (Stennett et al, 2022;Varela et al, 2023).…”

“…Hospitals are complex social systems that are significantly improved by adequate organizational coordination, effective integration of members' attitudes and motivations, and good interpersonal relationships (Varela et al, 2023;Yuan & Ferreira, 2022). However, hospitals should constantly be updated, which generates new complications and challenges (Ferreira et al, 2022;Georgopoulos & Matejko, 1967).…”

“…One typical manifestation of these changes is sudden variations in medical service supply or demand in the market. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on public healthcare, as the surge of patients led to an exponential increase in the demand for inpatient beds, intensive care units, ventilators, protective clothing, and other resources Ferreira et al, 2022;Varela et al, 2023;Xue et al, 2019). Beck (2009) helped develop the famous risk society theory, which covers the immeasurable risks and human-made uncertainties associated with the triumph of innovativeness that characterizes the human condition at the beginning of the 21st century.…”

“…ISM generates conceptual models that are widely used in, among other areas, transportation, education, healthcare, natural disaster risk control, technology and performance assessment, risk management and control, standards development, product and service systems, supplier development and management, supply chain management, and mobile payments (e.g., Kumar & Goel, 2022;Raj et al, 2008;Thakkar et al, 2006;Varela et al, 2023). This method is popular because it can represent ambiguous ideas as intuitive structural relationships, thereby enabling more objective analyses of problems.…”