Disruptive models of healthcare: Building value networks for change

European healthcare systems urgently need reform, but policymakers’ mind-sets are still stuck on managing existing systems or at best tinkering with them. They have little incentive to look beyond this to the bigger picture of radical change, so where might the leadership needed to foment a revolution in healthcare come from?

The EU’s citizens have been enthusiastically embracing new healthcare tools ranging from apps to online support groups, but health professionals tend not to trust medical data generated by outsiders. Yet if these new tools were to be fully integrated into our healthcare systems, clinicians and patients would benefit from a more equal role in co-creating new advances. New key players in healthcare might come from sectors ranging from tele-communications to food retailing. Innovations could create new value chains that combine traditional health actors like clinicians and insurers with technology and data companies.

How can this broader range of stakeholders be brought into discussions on healthcare? Can protected silos within healthcare be opened up to engage relevant players from across the value chain of disruptive innovations? How should these innovations be priced and who would pay for them – health systems seeking to reduce costs or private citizens willing to invest in their own continued good health? Where would the financing come from to prototype, test and evaluate disruptive innovation in healthcare? How would the return on investment be calculated – benefits to government budgets of more efficient and cheaper healthcare systems or assessing the benefits to citizens of potential better self-management of their health? What needs to happen to transform successful pilot interventions into large scale implementation?