Smart Healthcare Digitalization: Using ICT to Effectively Balance Exploration and Exploitation within Hospitals

Abstract

Most of the literature on healthcare digitalization is focused on the benefits, the barriers and the determinants of the adoption of ICT-based solutions within hospitals. Little is understood about how hospital digitalization can be accomplished or how this digitalization fosters an increase in hospital performance — both in terms of quality improvement and cost rationalization — by ambidextrously combining the exploration and exploitation of hospital assets. This paper sheds a preliminary light on the topic, identifying a set of action-oriented propositions for smart healthcare digitalization within hospitals.