Digital Innovation of Healthcare Services in Times of Crisis and Beyond

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a worldwide state of emergency, triggering extensive digital innovation within healthcare institutions to recover from the disrupted services caused by the pandemic. The purpose of this research is to explore the phenomena of digital innovation during these extraordinary conditions and to understand the impacts during the pandemic and beyond. To do so, we conducted a systematic literature review by analyzing 130 research articles across research disciplines that were published during the pandemic. We found that the innovation processes were highly iterative and focused on rapid diffusion to address the urgent need for stabilizing and recovering disrupted services. This short-term perspective may result in adverse impacts beyond the pandemic, such as increased inequity. Moreover, we found that some environmental factors were highly adaptive to the pandemic, whereas others were less so. We suggest that organizations should focus on the latter when building resilience to future pandemics.