Achieving digital-driven patient agility in the era of big data

TL;DR

This paper explores how hospital departments can develop digital dynamic capabilities to enhance patient agility, using data from Dutch hospitals to demonstrate the importance of digital skills in improving patient sensing, responding, and service performance.

Contribution

It introduces a research model based on dynamic capabilities theory and empirically tests the role of digital capabilities in enabling patient agility in hospitals.

Findings

Digital dynamic capability significantly enhances patient sensing and responding.

Improved patient sensing and responding lead to better patient service performance.

The study provides practical insights for hospitals to leverage digital technologies effectively.

Abstract

There is still a limited understanding of the necessary skill, talent, and expertise to manage digital technologies as a crucial enabler of the hospitals ability to adequately sense and respond to patient needs and wishes, i.e., patient agility. Therefore, this investigates how hospital departments can leverage a digital dy-namic capability to enable the departments patient agility. This study embraces the dynamic capabilities theory, develops a research model, and tests it accordingly using data from 90 clinical hospital departments from the Netherlands through an online survey. The model's hypothesized relationships are tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). The outcomes demonstrate the significance of digital dynamic capability in developing patient sensing and responding capabili-ties that, in turn, positively influence patient service performance. Outcomes are very relevant for the hospital practice now, as hospitals worldwide need to trans-form healthcare delivery processes using digital technologies and increase clinical productivity.