Gleiß, Alexander

The patient will see you now – Towards an understanding of on-demand healthcare

Abstract

The increasing prevalence and ubiquity of digital technologies is changing the needs and expectations of patients towards healthcare services. As a result, a plethora of patient-centered services edges into the healthcare market. Since digital technologies bear the potential to surmount barriers in time and space, patients increasingly demand real-time or near-time healthcare services. Amongst a cloud of related concepts in the context of digital health, one term increasingly typifies this impulse: on-demand healthcare. While this term can be noticeably found in practice, there is hardly some theoretical foundation so far. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to address this research gap and to explore the phenomenon of on-demand healthcare. Based on a design-science approach including a literature review and analysis of in-depth interviews and empirical cases, the outcome of this paper is twofold: (1) a conceptual framework and (2) a proposal for a definition of on-demand healthcare.