Willingness of German Medical Students and Experienced Physicians to Participate in Online Contests to Innovate in the Field of Health Care

Crowdsourcing can be a powerful tool to solve problems in the field of Health Care (Lakhani et al. 2013). In the age of digital transformation the technologies allow individuals and networks to interact in an efficient way... [ view full abstract ]

Crowdsourcing can be a powerful tool to solve problems in the field of Health Care (Lakhani et al. 2013). In the age of digital transformation the technologies allow individuals and networks to interact in an efficient way which is characterized by high-speed of performance per time unit and the irrelevance of geographic distances. Even the need of being a long-time working expert in a cetain field of knowledge seems to be not a gate-keeper for creating innovative solutions anymore. The strategy to use the crowd as an innovation partner (Boudreau and Lakhani 2013) can help to find a better innovative solution in a shorter time. The influence of users, user communities (Harhoff and Mayrhofer 2008), lead-users (Herstatt and von Hippel 1992) and producers on the innovation processes from different perspectives mean that we live in times of democratized innovation (von Hippel 2005).

Through online contests in the field of healthcare to innovate with crowds where you can participate as an individual with your own idea or work as part of a crowd on a special problem, the access to participate is generally open. In the year 2016 there are a range of national and international online contests in the field of healthcare, like the Health Acceleration Challenge of the Harvard Business School and Harvard Medical School in the US, the Medical Valley Open Innovation Platform Contests in Germany or the Business Plan Competition of the China Healthcare Investment Conference (CHIC). The research area we focused on in this study was about the wideness of the crowd which is involved in the online contests in the field of healthcare, because usually participants are also experienced physicians acting in different executive positions in clinics or in the healthcare industry. The specific research question we were interested in was to compare the willingness of a group of German medical students to a group of German experienced physicians to participate in those online contests in the field of healthcare.

For this study we asked in the timeline November 2014 – January 2016 two groups. The first group were German medical students (n = 258) from 5 universities in Germany whithout considering their study progress. The second group were german experienced physicians of different disciplines who worked minimum 10 years clinically (n = 184). The research process was organized differently for both groups. The medical students were interviewed on
university campus, especially when there were big meetings or exhibitions on campus where we could probably meet and ask a high number of students in one time with a standardized question paper. The second group of the experienced physicians were first invited to participate in this study by e-mail with a repeated two-week reminder-e-mail. Secondary, if the answer was positive to participate, we sent by e-mail a standardized question paper. Both groups were asked to mention 3 factors which could lead to a higher willingness of their peers to participate in those online contests.

We find about the first group (n = 258) that 78.29% (n = 202) of the asked German medical students are willing to participate in online contests to innovate in the field of health care. In the second group (n = 184) the results showed that 30.43% (n = 56) of the asked German experienced physicians are willing to participate in online contests to innovate in the field of healthcare.

The 3 most important factors who could lead to a higher willingness of their peers to participate in those online contests to innovate in the field of healthcare were in group 1: Credit Points for extra-curricular activities related to innovation (77.91%), more information from the medical and other faculties about those online contests (71.32%) and interdisciplinary events on campus (57.75%). In group 2: More detailed respond to the ideas brought in (60.87%), real-life meetings face-to-face with a part of the participating network (52.17%) and more interaction in sharing the final results of the contest (45.11%). The empirical results of this study showed significantly that the group of German medical students has a clearly higher (78.29%) willingness to participate in online contests to innovate in the field of health care compared to the group of experienced German physicians (30.43%).

Asked after factors to reach a higher willingness to participate within their peer group the most important factor for the german medical students were Credit Points for extracurricular activities related to innovation (77.91%) and for the experienced German physicians more detailed respond to the ideas brought in (60.87%). For the future of online contests to innovate in the field of health care there should be some thoughts to extend the wideness of the crowd to integrate a higher number of medical students. On the one side the contest itself profit from an additional perspective of this group of participants who have less experts knowledge while study medicine but maybe have in some ways a more uncomplex view. On the other side the medical students themselves learn from the very first years at the medical faculty to think in innovative patterns.