An Empirical Investigation of the Impact of ICT on Innovation in European Hospitals

Hospitals have been making significant investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) for long time. Therefore it is important to investigate their effects on various dimensions of hospitals’ performance, such as their innovation performance. However, there is a lack of empirical investigations of the impact of ICT on innovation in this important industry using large datasets. This paper makes a twofold contribution in this direction. First, it investigates empirically the impact of ICT on product and process innovation in European hospitals, based on data for 743 hospitals from 18 European countries collected in the course of the e-Business Survey of the European Union. Second it uses multiple independent ICT-related variables, associated with ICT investment, budget and personnel, and also with the use of specific ICT applications and standards, both healthcarespecific and general ones, investigating their effects on product and process innovation. Our results provide evidence of positive impact of ICT on hospitals’ innovation, which is however not homogeneous across all types of ICT applications: it is mainly applications enabling the exchange of data and knowledge between different functions/departments of the hospital, and with external environment, that impact positively innovation.