Digital business models and ridesharing for value co-creation in healthcare: A multi-stakeholder ecosystem analysis

The current advancements in digital technologies offer new opportunities for designing and modelling digital business models. In many industries, particularly in healthcare, coordinating and managing relationships with different stakeholders are well-known problems that organizations regularly face. Despite the increasing theo-retical and practical relevance of digital business models in healthcare, to date, there is a lack of specific research focused adequately on how value is created, delivered and captured for the various stakeholders in centrally mediated platforms within the healthcare ecosystem. By conducting an exploratory qualitative analysis, this study explores the case of Saluber, an Italian digital start-up offering ridesharing services for non-emergency medical transportation. The results show a series of various service value drivers, single-level benefits and community-level outcomes by which the central mediator of this sharing economy platform creates, delivers and captures value for its various types of stakeholders. These aspects are made available by the integration of digital business models. A multilevel framework of healthcare ecosystem rearranging was developed, which expands the value co-creation process beyond collaboration among various types of stakeholders and emphasizes the outcome of the digitalized network. Implications for scholars and managers are offered.