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Industrialized world‐based healthcare providers are increasingly off‐shoring low‐end healthcare services such as medical transcription, billing and insurance claims. High‐skill medical jobs such as tele‐imaging and tele‐pathology are also being sub‐contracted to developing countries. Despite its importance, little theory or research exists to explain what factors affect industry growth. The article's goals, therefore, are to examine economic processes associated with developing economies' shift from low‐ to high‐value information technology enabled healthcare services, and to investigate how these differ in terms of legitimacy from regulative, normative and cognitive institutions in the sending country and how healthcare services differ from other services.

This research is conceptual and theory‐building. Broadly, its approach can be described as a positivistic epistemology.

Anti off‐shoring regulative, normative and cognitive pressures in the sending country are likely to be stronger in healthcare than in most business process outsourcing. Moreover, such pressures are likely to be stronger in high‐value rather than in low‐value healthcare off‐shoring. The findings also indicate that off‐shoring low‐value healthcare services and emergent healthcare industries in a developing economy help accumulate implicit and tacit knowledge required for off‐shoring high‐value healthcare services.

The approach lacks primary data and empirical documentation.

The article helps in understanding industry drivers and its possible future direction. The findings help in understanding the lens through which various institutional actors in a sending country view healthcare service off‐shoring.

The article's value stems from its analytical context, mechanisms and processes associated with developing economies' shift to high‐value healthcare off‐shoring services.

The following article is a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent industry engineer-turned successful innovator and entrepreneur regarding the development of his inventions and the challenges he faced. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

The interviewee is Dr Amit Goffer, Chief Technology Officer and President at UPnRIDE Robotics Ltd., a startup that makes a wheeled robotic device for almost anyone who is unable to physically stand or walk. He served as Chief Executive Officer (until 2012) and President and Chief Technical Officer of ReWalk Robotics, a company he founded in 2001 (previously called Argo Medical Technologies Ltd). Prior to Argo/ReWalk, Dr Goffer served as the Founder at Odin Medical Technologies Ltd. (later acquired by Medtronic), President and Chief Executive Officer. As an accomplished inventor and serial entrepreneur of medical devices, Goffer describes how his education in school and in running his companies combined with his life experiences led to his breakthroughs.

Dr Amit Goffer completed BSc from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, MSc from Tel-Aviv University, Israel, and PhD from Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA, all in electrical and computer engineering. After working for Elscint, a medical imaging company, Goffer started Odin Medical to provide real-time magnetic resonance imaging images for brain surgery. After a tragic accident confined him to a wheelchair, Goffer created ReWalk, a robotic exoskeleton that enables people with lower limb disabilities to stand, walk, ascend/descend stairs and more. He recently founded his latest company, UPnRIDE.

Dr Amit Goffer is highly regarded as a pioneer of the emerging exoskeleton industry. His invention and development of the ReWalk Robotics wearable exoskeleton has enabled so far hundreds of wheelchair users to walk again, and another estimated 500,000 could benefit from it. Despite Goffer not being able to use the ReWalk himself, as he is a quadriplegic, his greatest passion is to improve the disabled’s self-esteem and quality of life. ReWalk was the first commercially available exoskeleton in the USA. It was named “best invention” by Popular Science and Time magazines. ReWalk Robotics went public in 2014. In 2015, the US Veteran’s Administration announced they would provide ReWalks for all eligible veterans with spinal cord injuries. Goffer recently devised UPnRIDE as a new product, allowing millions of wheelchair users worldwide, including himself, full mobility in the standing position in almost any urban environment.

Customers today expect businesses to cater to their individual needs by tailoring the products they purchase to their own preferences. The term “Industry 5.0” refers to a new wave of manufacturing that aims to meet each customer's unique demands. Even while Industry 4.0 allowed for mass customization, that wasn't good enough before, customers today demand individualized products at scale, and Industry 5.0 is driving the transition from mass customization to mass personalization to meet these demands. It caters to the individual needs of each consumer by meeting their demands. More specialized components for use in medicine are made possible by the widespread customization made possible by Industry 5.0. These individualized parts are included into the medical care of the patient to meet their specific needs and preferences. In the current medical revolution, an enabling technology of Industry 5.0 can produce medical implants, artificial organs, bodily fluids, and transplants with pinpoint accuracy. With the advent of AI-enabled sensors, we now live in a world where data can be swiftly analyzed. Machines may be programmed to make complex choices on the fly. In the medical field, these innovations allow for exact measurement and monitoring of human body variables according to the individual's needs. They aid in monitoring the body's response to training for peak performance. It allows for the digital dissemination of accurate healthcare data networks. In order to collect and exchange relevant patient data, every equipment is online.

The purposes of this paper are (1) to explore the overall development of AI technologies and applications that have been demonstrated to be fundamentally important in the healthcare industry, and their related commercialized products and (2) to identify technologies with promise as the basis of useful applications and profitable products in the AI-healthcare domain.

This study adopts a technology-driven technology roadmap approach, combined with natural language processing (NLP)-based patents analysis, to identify promising and potentially profitable existing AI technologies and products in the domain of AI healthcare.

Robotics technology exhibits huge potential in surgical and diagnostics applications. Intuitive Surgical Inc., manufacturer of the Da Vinci robotic system and Ion robotic lung-biopsy system, dominates the robotics-assisted surgical and diagnostic fields. Diagnostics and medical imaging are particularly active fields for the application of AI, not only for analysis of CT and MRI scans, but also for image archiving and communications.

This study is a pioneering attempt to clarify the interrelationships of particular promising technologies for application and related products in the AI-healthcare domain. Its findings provide critical information about the patent activities of key incumbent actors, and thus offer important insights into recent and current technological and product developments in the emergent AI-healthcare sector.

To provide insights into the current supply chain for original equipment manufacturers (OEM) in the radiology diagnostic imaging equipment business. As is common in many manufacturing and service firms, the rationale of bridging suppliers of OEMs is the ability to leverage technology, software, and accessories pertaining to the various pieces of equipment.

Several models of e‐procurement and e‐commerce related to the health care industry are presented.

Although the radiology capital equipment market presents numerous idiosyncrasies that must be addressed to successfully implement an e‐business strategy effectively, incredible opportunities exist all along the supply chain for e‐business strategies to both eliminate costs and acquire strategic initiatives. Those firms that most successfully listen to their customers and address the barriers to efficiency (B2E) will help move the industry toward more effective utilization of the benefits e‐business can create and also obtain first mover advantages.

Although the efficiencies that e‐business provides are extremely important in the radiology capital equipment market, the main value of e‐business in this industry of high‐priced and relatively infrequently purchased equipment may well be the value‐added benefits the technology brings to its customers, as illustrated in the modeling process. The OEMs that eventually market their finished product directly to hospital and imaging centers via a direct sales force can best take advantage of the connectivity and accessibility of e‐commerce.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the barriers and enablers to lean implementation as part of an imaging quality improvement programme from a socio-cultural perspective.

An in-depth 33 month ethnographic study, using observation and qualitative interviews, examined the process of lean implementation as part of an improvement programme.

Implementation of lean was more successful compared with other reports of lean in healthcare settings. Key enablers of lean were high levels of multidisciplinary staff involvement and engagement; the professional credibility of facilitators and clinicians as early adopters, all within a wider culture of relatively strong inter-professional relationships in the imaging department. These enablers combined with the more routinised and standardised nature of imaging pathways compared to some other acute specialties suggest that imaging is fertile ground for lean, linked to the manufacturing origins of lean.

When introducing lean within healthcare settings, special attention needs to be paid to the specific healthcare context and the existing cultures of inter-professional relationships. Fostering an improvement culture and engagement with training, together with adequate financial resource, are a key to contributing to the level of acceptability of an improvement tool such as lean.

This ethnographic study, bringing together rich multi-source data, has provided a detailed insight into the cultural workings of the process of lean implementation within a complex healthcare system.

Siemens Medical Solutions (SMS) offered innovative products and systems, clinical solutions, and services for medical professionals. Its latest project, transforming a hospital to digital records and processes, was experiencing serious delays that had damaged the relationship with the client. Management believed the underlying problem was that SMS was not using the correct approach to organization and processes for solutions marketing. The executives in charge of on-time completion and successful delivery of the project must now agree on a different recommendation.

Students will examine the infrastructure, customer offerings, and competitive landscape for Seimens Medical Solutions, as well as evaluate three potential organizational models (transient solutions, solutions streamlined enterprise, and adaptive solutions) to determine which represents the ideal structure for SMS. They will be able to identify the role of leadership in the organization, recommend how SMS should prepare for this change, and recommend how it would measure the transformation's success.

Reviews some of the improvements in image sensor technology that are yielding applications in the medical field.

Discusses the characteristics and gives examples of cameras and imaging sensors used in endoscopy, microscopy, pharmaceutical label inspection and X‐radiography. Reviews some innovative camera‐based products for endoscopy, skin imaging and health monitoring.

Improvements in camera resolution, miniaturisation and interfacing are widening the applications in medical imaging and enabling the development of some exciting new products addressing the needs of patients and medical staff.

Identifies some suppliers of medical imaging devices and their applications.