Open Innovation and Network approaches in Healthcare Ecosystems

Healthcare systems have been experiencing a radical change, moving from a centralized to an open model, where patients can contribute in creating the basis for their own wellbeing. In parallel, literature is giving an increasing interest to the Open Innovation approach, where large, medium and small enterprises cooperate. Despite the great interest in Open Innovation approach, few contributions are related to healthcare industry that includes both public and private organizations (hospitals, companies, universities), as well as "untraditional" players like doctors, nurses and patients. Framed in the above premises, the study develop an unique framework able to represent interactions among all actors involved in healthcare ecosystem, highlighting knowledge and information flows within them to improve their innovation potentialities according to an open approach.