| In recent years, there has been a veritable literary frenzy on the theme of healthcare and the Internet. In these works, however, there has not been adequate attention paid to the role that potential users of the site (patients, general practitioners, healthcare personnel, students, private doctors, other healthcare organizations, etc.) could and should play in the process of defining the Internet strategy.
To overlook these aspects while planning the information content and services of a Web site would have the same consequences as failing to do a stakeholder analysis while planning corporate strategy. This, in fact, allows the identification and analysis of the importance of people, groups, or institutions that can influence, positively or negatively, corporate activity, consequently determining the success or failure of a strategy. The objective, in the final analysis, is to identify their expectations, needs, and requirements so as to ensure correct alignment with the corporate strategic policy. This process is much more important when you are about to change the logistics of the production or provision of a product or service.
To put it more simply, you cannot hope to develop a high-profile Web strategy when patients do not have access to the Internet or lack technological skills, when the doctors of the organization are not interested and do not want to collaborate in providing the various content for services to be offered by the site, or when the general practitioners (GPs) do not regard the Internet as a tool that can improve their working conditions or results. |