Impacts of Information Technology on the Quality and Demand of Healthcare Products
Dr Sharon Tan Swee Lin, Associate Professor, School of Computing
COM2 Level 4
Executive Classroom, COM2-04-02
Abstract:
Quality and profitability are the two critical performances that healthcare purveyors concern the most. This thesis concerns how IT artifacts help healthcare purveyors to improve these two aspects. In the first study, we focus on the role of online distribution channel on searches and demand of skincare products, which is related to the profits indirectly and directly. In the second study, we focus on how healthcare analytics improves the quality of medical services in hospitals.
The first study concerns the role of the online distribution channel on the demand and searches for skincare products. When offline demand decreases because of a reduction in offline store patronage, how would online distribution channel help retailers provide product information and drive demand? In other words, will a reduction of offline visit affect online product search and purchase? To identify this effect, we use the exogenous shock from air pollution as a proxy for a decline of offline store patronage. We collected offline store sales and individual purchase data from a global multi-channel retailer of skincare products in China as well as multiple measurements of air pollution from various sources. Results show that both online and offline sales are adversely affected by the exogenous shock of air pollution on offline patronage. On the contrary, consumers' online product search behavior, regarding online browsing duration and the quantity of online searching, is not negatively affected. The online channel is a consistent channel for pre-purchase searches of products without being affected by the negative exogenous shock.
The second study concerns the values of healthcare analytics, an emerging IT artifact in the healthcare industry, on the quality of care and cost. Evaluation of healthcare analytics is a critical academic and managerial question but has received scant scholarly attention. Thus, the second study aims to address the following research questions: 1) How does healthcare analytics-driven interventions improve quality of care and cost-effectiveness? 2) How do physicians' autonomy and patients' clinical conditions moderate the above effects? These questions will be empirically examined in a Difference-in-Difference (DID) quasi-experiment setting. We collect the quality indicators and cost of the Total Knee Replacement (TKR) surgery from two leading hospitals in Singapore. Our preliminary results show that the quality of care has significantly and consistently improved after analytics-driven interventions while the total cost has remained the same. Alternatively, health analytics enhances the quality of care with affordable cost.
These two studies contribute to the IS literature on the value of IT artifacts in the healthcare industry as well as the literature on multichannel retailing. These two studies also have managerial implications to multichannel retailing of healthcare products and the quality control in hospitals.