Market Entry, Strategy and Business Development in Mobile Health (mHealth) Industry

Abstract: Problem formulation. The European Commission considers that health care providers and potential payers may need further evidence of mobile health (mHealth) clinical and economic benefits and despite there are hundreds of mHealth initiatives, most of them did not move beyond the pilot phase.   Purpose. This thesis aims at analyzing how can mHealth companies contribute towards solving existing health care challenges while becoming successful businesses in such an immature market. The expected results are a set of empirical evidences for companies and investors interested in this relatively new industry for the development of successful businesses, products and services.   Literature. The authors have explored classic theories and models on market entry, business and strategy development in combination with recent studies on health care, Internet and mHealth economy and ecosystem.   Methods. A qualitative multiple case study has been conducted. An analytical framework with propositions derived from the literature analysis guide the empirical study of two organizations that have successfully developed mHealth solutions in two countries with different socio-economic situations: China and Spain. Organization A is a health care and lifestyle company from Beijing responsible for a successful app with 80 million users that has brought 45 million USD investment. Organization B is the first intrapreneurial public organization born within a hospital in Madrid and committed to make knowledge available to patients and health care professionals through ICT. After a set of interviews with executive representatives and project managers, a pattern-matching analysis has been used to extract inferences and to identify correlations and deviations from literature research.   Key findings. The main conclusion of this thesis work is that mHealth is clearly a profitable blue ocean industry nowadays with lots of business opportunities to explore, room for competition and complex challenges to solve. On one side, mHealth is presented as a disruptive industry expected to cause a big impact in health care by contributing to solve costs and quality problems although there is little evidence on such benefits. On the other side, privacy, security, regulations, governments’ decisions and reluctant health care professionals become the main barriers for adoption. The outlook for the future of mHealth proves that it will be fundamental to count with multidisciplinary teams of professionals, geographically distributed health centers and technological platforms with secure and standardized communications. All these will not be possible without a general mindset change from government, administrators, regulators and health care professionals to incentivize and foster new mobile health technologies treating them as an ally rather than a threat.