Modular Service Architecture and Service Interfaces in the Service Delivery Process - a Case Study Form the Healthcare Industry: Focus on Modularity's Effect on Performance

Abstract

The healthcare industry has long suffered from lengthy service processes because the different parts of the process are too separate and lack common practices, interfaces and information exchange. Modularity has been stated being a theoretically potential solution for answering the challenges the healthcare industry is facing, but empirical research is still scarce on this area.

The research objective of this thesis is to investigate the service delivery process from the modularity perspective in the healthcare context. The goal is to find out the effect of modularity on the performance of the service delivery process. Closer attention is paid to finding out how the interfaces are in the different parts of the service process. In the research, the primary unit of analysis is the service delivery process in one case company.

To address the issues, a case study is conducted in a Finnish privately-owned hospital. The research method chosen is single-case study with semi-structured interviews. The secondary data is gathered from online sources. To analyze the data, a framework is constructed based on previous research to help decomposing the delivery process and find out the links between modularity and performance.

The results show that the service delivery process in the case hospital is modular. Additionally, the results suggest that modularity and modular interfaces have influence on the performance of the service delivery process and the case company. Modularity allows the case hospital to customize the process according to the individual patient's needs, which affects the patient satisfaction, and can shorten the recovery time.

In general, it can be stated that modularity has positive effect in providing demand-driven treatment, which has influence on performance. Additionally, the framework developed for the study may be applied in other studies. Furthermore, the research rises future research ideas, which can help understand modularity's role and potential in healthcare services even further.