Bridging Borders in Healthcare

Abstract

Healthcare innovation company FocusCura is one of the largest providers of eHealth in The Netherlands. Even though they are already active in other countries, they do not yet have a structured decision-making process for an international go-to-market decision. A decision aid for the business development department of the company solves this problem. To develop a decision aid academic and empirical research took place in three steps. First, to understand the internationalization strategy, process, and actions that provide the content for the decision aid. Second, to know more about decision aids and structured decision-making processes, that determined the decision aid structure. Third, generative research that provided company criteria for the design of the form. After configuration, this resulted in an improved internationalization process and a decision model that follows that. Building on that, a design process delivered a decision aid concept that meets the form criteria. It is tested with the end-user and optimized. The final foreign market-entry decision aid design followed from that. This design guides the user through the process of completing the decision model with a canvas and cards. A case study of the market-entry decision for the German personal alarms market then provided validation of the final design. This also indicated that FocusCura should enter that market. The result proved that the decision aid design structures the decision-making process and provides support to the decision maker.