Abstract:

Defining healthcare as an activity aimed at disease prevention and treatment means that it is particularly important not only to provide the society with medical services, but also to implement solutions that increase the availability of healthcare. The delivery of healthcare services that requires the physical meeting of the service provider – the physician, with its recipient – the patient, can now be considered logistically critical. Hence, the establishment of the channels of communication between patients and healthcare entities other than traditional (direct) has become a contemporary challenge. The one all the more important as the average life expectancy increases implying the more frequent use of healthcare services – an inevitable necessity for many. Technological progress expressed in the employment of modern solutions in diagnostic and therapeutic procedures which are directly dependent on the intensive development of medical sciences and improvement of the effectiveness of medical activities, is essential to meet these demographic requirements. The progressive technicization of life contributes, among others, to a significant increase in the use of information flow both by the market players in the supply chain (e.g. between a hospital pharmacy and a pharmaceutical wholesaler) and at the entity-consumer level (e.g. healthcare entity – patient). Access to technology – creating, sending and processing information – reduces the perceived spatial distance as well as affects time compression and as a result may improve the satisfaction of the healthcare system users (e.g. patients).