How to Make Integrated Care Services Sustainable? An Approach to Business Model Development

A business model development process that aims to involve stakeholders is faced with the challenge of communicating a complex subject matter to a nonexpert audience with the aim of empowering them to make informed design suggestions or decisions. This chapter presents an approach to these challenges. It consists of two elements, building on each other. The first element is a method and toolkit for the assessment of socioeconomic impacts in health, care, and ageing, called ASSIST. The second element is a simulation tool based on real-life data that allows building an integrated care service and modeling how it responds to changes in economic factors. This second element we call the ASSIST Service Implementation Simulator. Both elements will be described in the following. When developing and implementing integrated care services, decision-makers need to create complex business models involving many stakeholders across a range of sectors, both for profit and nonprofit, and rely on reimbursement from statutory health and social care bodies as well as on other revenue streams. The needs of these stakeholders have to be identified and duly balanced within the framework of what is possible. This requires the handling of a large amount of economic data, the capacity to anticipate future developments, and creativity in dealing with unintended consequences. Furthermore, the development of a business model is likely to involve stakeholders that are not economic experts. In this chapter, we present a combined approach to business model development that allows stakeholders to get acquainted with economic assessments while carrying out their own assessment and develop their business model.