Together with my co-chairs, Lauri Wessel (European University Viadrina), Melanie Reuter-Oppermann (Technical University Darmstadt), and Andrew Burton-Jones (The University of Queensland), we are happy to invite you to this year's track on "Digital Health & Well-Being" at International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI2023). Submit your research until March 10, 2023: https://wi2023.de/en/track-19-en/

Track description

The digital transformation of health care has been a going concern for researchers in the field of information systems (IS) (Agarwal et al. 2010; Baird et al. 2018; Burton-Jones et al. 2019). However, over time, the themes associated with this overarching research interest have begun to change as have the technologies and tools that are available to practitioners and policy makers in the health care space.

A classical topic in the digital transformation of health care concerns the implementation of information systems in hospitals (Baird et al. 2018) and the role that electronic medical records play therein (Agarwal et al. 2010; Hansen and Baroody 2020; Oborn et al. 2011). Dynamics that have unfolded throughout more recent years have also brought to the fore meaningful technological developments that add to these classical topics and further diversify the digital health research space. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of digital tools such as contact tracing apps for disaster control (Pandl et al. 2021; Trang et al. 2020). Likewise, platforms have emerged that enable patients to exchange ideas, self-help and find advice (Barrett et al. 2016; Fürstenau et al. 2021). Building on these developments, an increasingly important discussion puts patients at the center by exploring their roles and responsibilities in digitally enabled self-management (Dadgar and Joshi 2018; Wessel et al. 2019) as well as calling on providers to design, engineer, and manage the delivery of health care services in a patient-centered manner thereby creating novel types of value (Agarwal et al. 2020; Porter 2010; Porter and Teisberg 2006). At the center of all these developments lies a renewed interest of researchers in the role that data play for innovation in services, digital tools, and applications (Jarvenpaa and Markus 2018; Rothe et al. 2019; Thiebes et al. 2020; Vassilakopoulou et al. 2018) that also concerns society at large as digital technologies become widely accepted diagnostic and even therapeutic tools.

In short, when we as researchers say ‘digital transformation of health care’ we are in fact looking back at a rich and diverse body of literature. Some of the literature may echo classical themes that matter up until today while other parts of the literature reflect more recent societal and academic interests. This is why time has come to take stock and ask where our cumulated efforts to build knowledge around digital health have taken us and what the future may bring.

This track casts the net wide and welcomes submissions that speak to the abovementioned issues and new topics entering the fray. We welcome all submissions with the potential to contribute to our understanding of both classical health care IT topics as well as more recent topics relating to the relationship between digital data objects, digital tools and their potentially transformational impacts. Papers may be focused on original theory-oriented research, design-oriented research, empirical studies, or conceptual work. We are agnostic in terms of methodologies applied.

Track topics

Submissions may address the following topics, but are not limited to them:

• The changing role and management of digital health data for digital innovation
• New impact of digital health tools and digital data objects in- and outside of healthcare, e.g., in times of crisis
• A process perspective explaining dynamics of digital transformation in healthcare
• Change of professional roles, identities, and institutions for value creation in health
• New design of digital innovations for improving patients’ self-management of chronic conditions
• The role of data and tools as inhibitors or promotors for a disease-based health care system
• The potential for precision medicine in transforming the health system 
• The potential for sharing algorithms across jurisdictions to enable international progress in clinical research and quality improvement 
• The role of data and tools like sensors, wearables technologies, and digital health apps as inhibitors or promotors for a patient-centric health care
• The role of digital tools like virtual coaching for autonomy of health care providers and patients
• The relationship between classical hospital information systems and more recent digital innovations in health care
• Changing business models towards preventative care and patient or citizen-centered models
• Changes in support for people in need for care, including elderly or handicapped, through digital technologies
• The role of new digital technologies like XR, web3.0 and machine learning for creating health data and for creating value from health data
• New modes of capturing value from digital health data, e.g., reimbursement strategies
• New ethical challenges from health data, considering privacy and security
• Digital tools and use of digital health data to connect different participants of health service networks, to support decision making and to improve logistical and organisational processes

Track Chairs

• Lauri Wessel (European University Viadrina)
• Hannes Rothe (University of Duisburg-Essen)
• Melanie Reuter-Oppermann (Technical University Darmstadt)
• Andrew Burton-Jones (The University of Queensland)

Associate Editors

• Angela Aristidou, University College London
• Paul Drews, Leuphana University Lüneburg
• Daniel Fürstenau, Copenhagen Business School
• Martin Gersch, Freie Universität Berlin
• Tobias Kowatsch, Universität St. Gallen
• Roxana Ologeanu-Taddei, University of Montpellier
• Hannes Schlieter, Technical University Dresden
• Franziska Bathelt, Technical University Dresden
• Stefanie Steinhäuser, University of Regensburg
• Polyxeni Vassilakopoulou, University of Agder
• Anne-Katrin Witte, FernUni Hagen & Technical University of Berlin
• Manuel Trenz, University of Göttingen
• Torsten Eymann, University of Bayreuth
• Heiko Gewald, HS Neu-Ulm