medical emarketplace

1. Procedia Technology 5 (2012) 959 – 966
2212-0173 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of CENTERIS/SCIKA - Association for Promotion
and Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge
doi:10.1016/j.protcy.2012.09.106
CENTERIS 2012 - Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems / HCIST 2012 - International
Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies
An e-Marketplace of Healthcare and Social Care Services: the
perceived interest
Maria Manuela Cruz-Cunhaa,d,*
, João Varajãob,f
, Isabel Mirandac
, Nuno Lopesa
,
Ricardo Simoesa,e
a
Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave, Campus do IPCA, 4750-810 Vila Frescainha S. Martinho BCL, Portugal
b
University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro
c
Câmara Municipal de Guimarães, 4800 Guimarães, Portugal
d
Research Center in Production Technologies and Energy, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimaraes, Portugal
e
Institute for Polymers and Composites IPC/I3N, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimaraes, Portugal
f
Algoritmi Research Centre, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimaraes, Portugal
Abstract
The health and social care sector is receiving growing attention for the last years, due to the increased life
expectancy, the public demand for a better quality of life and for better health services. These requirements
can be met with more cost-efficient approaches and using new technology-based solutions for providing
services. The paper presents and discusses some of the main results of a study undertaken in Guimarães, a
Municipality at the North of Portugal, on the perceived relevance of an e-Marketplace of social and healthcare
services for the inhabitants in general, and in particular for people with special needs; the study also included
the identification of the most relevant services to be offered by this platform and allowed concluding that such
an e-Marketplace is of recognized relevance and that it is expected a good adhesion from the population.
© 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of
CENTERIS/HCIST.
Keywords: e-Marketplace; healthcare services; social care services; elderly people; people with special needs.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +351-965656566; fax: +351-253416725.
E-mail address: mcunha@ipca.pt
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
© 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of CENTERIS/SCIKA -
Association for Promotion and Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.

2. 960 Maria Manuela Cruz-Cunha et al. / Procedia Technology 5 (2012) 959 – 966
1. Introduction
According to the strategy defined by the European Council in Lisbon, e-Health has a clear role in the
European Union strategy – eEurope – and is the key to attain a stronger growth and create qualified
employment in a dynamic and knowledge-based economy [1-3]. However, this intention requires specific
actions, from research and development of new models for application and/or integration of existing
technology, new technological advances, the widespread reach of broadband internet access to all population
(particularly remote areas) and overcoming the digital divide due to the ability to use technology, specific
public health actions, and the problematic issues of integrating the population with special care needs, such as
elder people, in the e-Health systems.
One of the goals of the reforms in the European Healthcare systems over the last two decades has been to
make them more demand oriented. Several studies as well as official documents evidence that Internet and
telecommunication technologies and infrastructures may contribute significantly to health care system
performance [4-8].
Several health care and social care services should desirably be provided at the user’s home. So, the
existence of a network of health care, social care and professional services providers, working articulately
with an underlying effective management and intermediation service, based on an electronic marketplace (e-
Marketplace) for health and social care services, can be a powerful tool and result in effective and efficient
service to people with special needs (elderly and permanently or temporarily disabled people) and to the
population in general.
A wide range of supporting technologies already exist that can contribute to such purpose. What is needed
is an integrating environment to identify user needs transmitted over an e-marketplace platform and the
allocation of services providers to answer these needs, integration and management, performance monitoring
and evaluation, commitment control, etc.
The authors proposed a pilot project for the Municipality of Guimarães1
envisaging the definition and
implementation of an e-marketplace for healthcare and social services, designated by GuiMarket, integrating
healthcare professionals and professionals of social services with the inhabitants and institutions willing to
accede to these services. For the implementation of a pilot for this service it is essential to understand the
feelings and expectancies of the inhabitants towards the importance that should be devoted to such a solution
that at the same time increases the well-being of people, allows an optimization in the delivery of services in
the sector of health and social care, and contributes to a desirable reform of making these services demand
oriented, and simultaneously to cope with the population ageing or with special requirements.
With this purpose, authors have undertaken a study that is the main subject of this paper, which results are
important to shape the platform to be offered, respecting the expectancies of the potential users.
The paper briefly presents the prototype of this e-Marketplace in section two, in section three presents the
study, the main results are discussed in section four and section five concludes the paper.
1
Guimarães is a medium-sized historic city and a municipality in northern Portugal, with a population of about 160,000 inhabitants in
241,3 km2
.

3. 961Maria Manuela Cruz-Cunha et al. / Procedia Technology 5 (2012) 959 – 966
2. An e-Marketplace for healthcare and social care services
Electronic Marketplaces implement the concept of “market”, that is, the “place” where offer and demand
are met. E-Marketplaces are developed to bring together large numbers of buyers and sellers expanding the
choices available to buyers, and giving sellers new opportunities and access to new customers (buyers) [9],
simultaneously reducing transaction costs for all participants [10].
E-Marketplaces are a third party, mediating offer and demand, offering important value-added
mechanisms [11,12]: facilitate multiple buyers and sellers to connect to negotiate prices on a dynamic real-
time basis; promotes trust and support transaction phases.
The objectives consist of offering new solutions in the area of health care and social care, provision of
home services, making available privileged communication means between offer and demand.
The platform is an environment to coordinate and manage the match between the offer of healthcare and
social care services (provided by healthcare social care professionals and specialized institutions) and the
individuals (users or patients) with special needs or institutions, that in a particular moment need the
intervention of a professional [13]. The entities and their roles are presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Offer and Demand in a health and social care e-Marketplace.
Demand Individuals The service is designed having in mind firstly individuals with special
needs, elder or disabled (temporarily or permanently), but it is accessible
to all population of the Municipality. Currently a significant number of
these targeted users cannot access these technologies, but this task can be
performed by their relatives, neighbours or friends.
Organizations In a perspective of complementarities to the services they offer, or as
demanders of services provided by the other classes of providers
represented in the e-Marketplace.
Offer Individuals and
enterprises
Individuals and enterprises certified to provide social care, health care or
home specific services, such as gerontology services, transportation,
plumbing, catering, cleaning, transportation, home assistance, or massages
and therapists.
Organizations Certified entities of the social network of services and care providers, the
health care network.
Fig.1. GuiMarket webpage.

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3. The study
The authors have undertaken a wide study in 2011, in order to identify essential information on the needs
of potential users and their expectancies with relation to the proposed platform.
The results of the study are a support for the project promoters to understand the viability of the solution
and the requirements to the deployment of the pilot experiment, as well as to drive the selection of domains of
activities / classes of services to be offered by the GuiMarket platform.
This section presents the methodology, the sample and some of the research questions.
3.1. Methodology
Information was collected from a random stratified sample of inhabitants in a set of parishes and carried
out at different hours of the day, and different places of each parish, in order to reach as many diverse people
as possible and also to accomplish the age stratification defined and to include people of all the educational
levels.
As a tool for information gathering it was used a semi-structured interview consisting of open and closed
questions concerning the perceived interest in the platform, the expected utilization and the services
considered to be more relevant or more interesting for the community of users.
3.2. The sample
The sample is stratified starting with the age of 18, and has been defined in terms of age distribution of the
population living in the parishes covered, according to 20012
data provided by the National Institute of
Statistics. Of the 333 interviews, 18 could not be considered due to the fact that they contained some
unanswered questions. Thus, 315 valid responses were obtained.
3.3. Research questions
From the wide set of research questions, this paper will address the following:
• How important is the existence of an e-Marketplace of health and social care services?
• What is the expected utilization of this platform?
• What services are more important to be offered via an e-Marketplace?
4. Discussion of results
In this section it is promoted the discussion of parts of the above mentioned three questions. The statistical
analysis carried out was performed with SPSS®
(Statistical Package for Social Sciences) version 19 and
Microsoft Excel®
. The results of the study clarified the approach to follow on the next step with the validation
and demonstration of the proposed solution in real context.
2
This was the most recent census available at the time the study was performed, in early 2011.

5. 963Maria Manuela Cruz-Cunha et al. / Procedia Technology 5 (2012) 959 – 966
4.1. Importance granted to an e-Marketplace for health and social care services
Table 2 represents the importance that participants attribute to the existence of an electronic marketplace
for health and social care services. To simplify the analysis, the answers to the questionnaire falling in the
three categories “Not important”, “Little important” and “Indifferent” were grouped given its small
expression. To 49.2% of the participants and e-Marketplace for health and social care services is stated as
“Very important”.
Table 2. Importance granted to an e-Marketplace for health and social care services.
frequency %
Not important / Little important / Indifferent 14 4.4
Important 146 46.3
Very important 155 49.2
Total 315 100.0
4.2. Expected frequency of use
Table 3 presents the expected frequency of use of the services provided by the electronic marketplace.
More than a half expects to use them several times, and only a few intent to use them frequently (daily or
several times per week), what may look contradictory to the importance granted to this platform. However, as
shown in the cross tabulation represented in Table 4, there is a strong relation among the recognized
importance and the intention of use.
Table 3. Expected frequency of utilization of the an e-Marketplace for health and social care services.
frequency %
Never 15 4.8
Rarely 101 32.1
Sometimes 177 56.1
Frequently (daily or a few times per week) 22 7.0
Total 315 100.0
Most of the inquired that intend to use the e-Marketplace sometimes of frequently are the same that
classified it as very important.
The analysis of data would suggest a higher expectation of use, given the very high importance recognized
to the service, but this fact is due to the correlation between the expected utilization and having a personal
computer, internet access, or someone nearby to access Internet on behalf of the inquired person, age and
educational level, as shown in Table 5. For instance, from the study we confirmed that older people recognize
the importance of this platform, but are unable to use it.

6. 964 Maria Manuela Cruz-Cunha et al. / Procedia Technology 5 (2012) 959 – 966
Table 4. Expected utilization frequency versus Importance granted to the e-Marketplace – Cross tabulation.
Importance granted to the e-Marketplace
Not important / Little
import. / Indifferent
Important Very important Total
Expected
utilization
frequency
Never 23.1% 69.2% 7.7% 100.0%
Rarely 3.8% 71.8% 24.4% 100.0%
Sometimes 1.5% 35.1% 63.4% 100.0%
Frequently 0.0% 13.6% 86.4% 100.0%
Table 5. Expected utilization frequency in function of characteristics of the inhabitants.
Hasacomputer
athome
Hasinternet
connection
Isaninternet
user
Hasaninternet
usernearby
Educational
level
Agegroups
Intended use of
the Guimarket
services
Spearman's Correlation
Coefficient
.125 .161 .297 .167 .278 -.209
Sig. (2-tailed) .026 .004 .000 .003 .000 .000
N 315 315 315 315 315 315
The analysis of Table 5 allows concluding the existence of relation between the intended use of the
GuiMarket services (with <0.05) and:
• Having a computer at home;
• Having internet access;
• Rate of internet utilization, for Internet users;
• Having an internet user nearby;
• The educational level;
• The age group of the inquired.
The intended use of this service increases when the inquired has a computer at home, or internet access,
has a higher rate of internet utilization or has an internet user nearby. It is noted also that the inquired people
with higher level of education consider making a more frequent use of GuiMarket and those with less than 40
years old consider using it more frequently.
4.3. Relevant services to be provided by a social e-Marketplace
When inquired about the services they consider to be the most important if supported by the proposed
platform, the results conducted to Table 6, graphically represented in Figure 2. The questionnaire previewed,
among other, the following services: information about healthcare services, 24 hours per day home

7. 965Maria Manuela Cruz-Cunha et al. / Procedia Technology 5 (2012) 959 – 966
monitoring and accompanying/follow-up services, personal hygiene, services of accompaniment,
alimentation/restaurants, personalized transport, repair of household appliances, personal care services,
household services, information about shops and computer repair. Other services were included, but we are
not mentioning them as they did not deserve significant expression of interest from the inquired.
The three best rated services are the information about healthcare services, the 24 hours/day home
monitoring and accompanying /follow-up services and the personal hygiene services provided at home.
Table 6. Importance granted to the proposed services to be provided by the platform.
Informationabout
healthcareservices
Homemonitoring/
accompanying24
hours/day
Personalhygiene
Accompanimentat
home
Food/restaurants
Personalized
transportation
Reapirofhousehold
appliances
Personalcare
services
Householdservices
Informationabout
shops
Computerrepair
Very important 68.4 64.8 56.7 47.8 34.4 32.0 18.6 15.4 15.0 15.0 10.9
Important 26.3 28.7 32.0 33.6 39.7 42.1 44.1 29.6 32.4 34.8 37.2
Not important / Little
important / indifferent
5.3 6.5 11.3 18.6 25.9 25.9 37.2 55.1 52.6 50.2 51.8
Total (%) 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Fig.2. Importance granted to the proposed services to be provided by the platform.

8. 966 Maria Manuela Cruz-Cunha et al. / Procedia Technology 5 (2012) 959 – 966
5. Conclusions
The paper introduced a pilot project of an e-marketplace for healthcare and social services currently being
developed in Guimarães, Portugal. At this phase it is very important to understand how the inhabitants see and
understand such an electronic service, what is the importance they recognize to it and what particular services
are they expecting from such e-Marketplace. The user needs analysis undertaken, and of which some results
are included in the paper, allowed us to understand the importance that the population gives to such a service,
in particular for people with special needs. It is certain that at this moment many potential users will be
excluded by the well-known digital divide problem; however this is a global concern of our times, progresses
are being made at this level, and new actions and efforts such as active ageing and the e-inclusion will
gradually allow going beyond these limitations.
Services such as information about healthcare services, home monitoring /accompanying services 24 hours
per day and personal hygiene services provided at home are the ones recognized by the inquired citizens as
very important to be provided by GuiMarket, and this traduces that the potential users will be mostly people
with special needs or their family or caregivers. This project here roughly drafted represents a good
opportunity to develop a totally innovative service with high potential for individuals with special needs, as
we have also been able to conclude in all the public presentations, anticipating a good adhesion to the project
being developed.
Acknowledgements
Financial support provided by the Municipality of Guimaraes, under a collaboration project with the
University of Minho. Foundation for Science and Technology, Lisbon, through 3.° Quadro Comunitário de
Apoio, and project PEst-C/CTM/LA0025/2011.
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