According to the World Health Organization (WHO), people worldwide are living longer. Today most people can expect to live into their sixties and beyond. Every country in the world is experiencing growth in both the size and the proportion of older persons in the population. By 2030, 1 in 6 people in the world will be aged 60 years or over. At this time the share of the population aged 60 years and over will increase from 1 billion in 2020 to 1.4 billion. By 2050, the world’s population of people aged 60 years and older will double (2.1 billion). The number of persons aged 80 years or older is expected to triple between 2020 and 2050 to reach 426 million (WHO, 2021).
Although the steady and ongoing increase in life expectancy is a significant human achievement, it also poses significant challenges for future generations in terms of paying for increased health and care services (Oderanti and Li, 2016). Technology can be useful for individuals of all ages to better manage their health and quality of life. In this sense, digital solutions can be a powerful ally in maintaining cost-effective and high-quality health and social care.
The growing demand for health and social care due to a rapidly ageing population also calls for new market development of eHealth products and services. Market development in eHealth has been both slow and fragmented. Many successful pilot programs, in reality, fail to scale up or become financially sustainable once the initial funding runs out. Other sectors that have effectively implemented new business models and generated sustainable new market development can also provide valuable insights.
A multiple-case study design, based on 20 UK and 13 international cases, has identified new business models that support sustainable and scalable new market development in eHealth, for greater independent healthy living by older people in communities and improve the well-being and welfare of older people, their relatives and their caregivers (Oderanti et al., 2021).
Entrepreneurs must understand the needs and preferences, and improve the usability of eHealth by both existing and future users, as well as the contexts in which they are utilized and incorporated into people’s lives and daily routines, in order to offer scalable business solutions for successful personalized services. This focus will ensure there are informed design processes for eHealth. Questions about how ‘need’ is conceptualized in the successful provision of eHealth and how this provision impacts acceptability, use, and user satisfaction of eHealth in the home context, need to be answered, as well as the role of ‘choice’ when developing economic and business solutions that connect with users and their perspectives to best satisfy their needs and provide net benefits to users as well as eHealth providers in terms of sustainable revenue generation.
Our ageing society poses a serious societal challenge, but it also opens up a vast, lucrative, and helpful/ beneficial business opportunities for better care. According to Professor Feng Li, “To develop scalable business solutions, entrepreneurs need to understand the ways in which eHealth is used now and how it will be used in the future, as well as the contexts in which they are integrated into people’s lives.”
