Sources of Technological Innovation in Health Care Services

Technological innovation became one of the biggest sources of competitiveness in major sub-sectors of services. In what concerns health care services business, evidences are much more diffused, because the ownership of the business could influence the objectives in terms of competitiveness, costs and service quality. Additionally, the concept of technological innovation is very wide, if we consider new medical equipment devices, new pharmaceuticals, new ways of contact with patients / clients, or new work processes. This paper intends to define a broad approach, in theoretical terms, to the different sources of innovation technology that could create additional competitiveness to the health care services business. Another important field to explore in this paper is to try to evaluate the impact of technological innovation in the different parts of health care business. Probably the impact of technology innovation in a major hospital surgery centre is very different from a dentist consultancy office, in terms of client’s satisfaction, costs, investment or training expenditures. Networks inside and around health care organisations are also part of this complex evaluation, particularly because innovation to be well succeeded needs to be adopted by the networks. Findings from this paper will help to define clearly sources of technological innovation and its relation with different types of health care service, which allow in a near future to know more about the relation between technological innovation and competitiveness in the different parts of the health care service business, and also in different types of ownership.