Scaling the adoption of wearable medical devices through business model innovations

Abstract

Wearable medical devices have the potential to impact the healthcare ecosystem which comprises patients, healthcare providers, policy makers and clinical researchers. They have applications in personalised medicine, pandemic management, and clinical biomarker identification. Despite these potentials, their adoption has been slow in mainstream medical practice due to divergence in business models amongst players in the healthcare ecosystem. Other challenges such as legal and legislative barriers, high device acquisition cost, and interoperability have limited the adoption of these devices. This study was aimed at illustrating that wearable medical devices need to be matched with innovative and all-inclusive business models to create shared value across stakeholders thereby facilitating their use in routine clinical settings and improving accessibility and affordability. A government policy advisor, a management consultant, a chief technology officer in a software company, a chief science officer of a biotech firm and a legislator were consulted to scope this paper. In these discussions, these areas were identified for exploration: Capabilities of wearables, Market trend of these devices, Challenges for the uptake of these devices, regulatory process, legal, legislative and scenarios where business modelling gave firms, competitive advantage. Multiple search engines were utilized for selecting relevant materials, predominantly PubMed and Google Scholar. To supplement the  information obtained, government documents were located using the “GOV.info” publications tools, while interviews and commentaries were found through the Google News search function. From the findings, we propose that firms in the wearable device industry innovate their business model in a stakeholder-driven manner across institutions, fostering strategic partnerships and putting customers and end users at the core of their business model in order to effectively create, deliver and capture value. Firms in this industry should innovate their business model to avoid being rendered redundant by external innovation.