Blended human-technology service realities in healthcare
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Date
5/01/2022
Open Access Location
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Emerald
Rights
Abstract
Purpose – The healthcare sector is experiencing a major paradigm shift toward a people-centered approach.
The key issue with transitioning to a people-centered approach is a lack of understanding of the ever-increasing role of technology in blended human-technology healthcare interactions and the impacts on healthcare actors’ well-being. The purpose of the paper is to identify the key mechanisms and influencing factors through which blended service realities affect engaged actors’ well-being in a healthcare context.
Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper takes a human-centric perspective and a value co creation lens and uses theory synthesis and adaptation to investigate blended human-technology service
realities in healthcare services.
Findings – The authors conceptualize three blended human-technology service realities – human-dominant,
balanced and technology-dominant – and identify two key mechanisms – shared control and emotional-social
and cognitive complexity – and three influencing factors – meaningful human-technology experiences, agency
and DART (dialogue, access, risk, transparency) – that affect the well-being outcome of engaged actors in these
blended human-technology service realities.
Practical implications – Managerially, the framework provides a useful tool for the design and management
of blended human-technology realities. The paper explains how healthcare services should pay attention to
management and interventions of different services realities and their impact on engaged actors. Blended human-technology reality examples – telehealth, virtual reality (VR) and service robots in healthcare – are used
to support and contextualize the study’s conceptual work. A future research agenda is provided.
Originality/value – This study contributes to service literature by developing a new conceptual framework
that underpins the mechanisms and factors that influence the relationships between blended human technology service realities and engaged actors’ well-being
Description
Keywords
Blended human-technology service realities, People-centered healthcare, Shared control, DART, Well-being, Service robot, Covid-19
Citation
JOURNAL OF SERVICE THEORY AND PRACTICE, 2022, 32 (1), pp. 75 - 99