The COVID-19 emergency as an opportunity to co-produce an innovative approach to health services provision: the women's antenatal classes move on the web

Manila Bonciani (), Ilaria Corazza and Sabina Rosis
Additional contact information
Manila Bonciani: Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies
Ilaria Corazza: Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies
Sabina Rosis: Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies

Italian Journal of Marketing, 2022, vol. 2022, issue 1, No 4, 59-85

Abstract: Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly affected healthcare organizations, leading to the need for reorganizing also maternal care services during pregnancy. The Regional Health Authorities in Tuscany (Italy) promoted the creation of online antenatal classes (ACs). This study illustrates the innovative approach to deliver ACs online and discusses how the collaborative approach in co-producing this innovative solution co-creates value in healthcare. The action research design was based, on one hand, on the indirect involvement of users by analyzing qualitative data collected through a continuous survey to pregnant women and, on the other one, on the direct involvement of managers and health professionals in meetings and workshops. The authors encompassed all necessary changes in organizational practices and facilitated the collaborative process implementation and analysis. The main findings are that moving ACs online has been a relevant choice, since the need of pregnant women to share information and receive emotional support increased in times of crisis. Additionally, in the perspective of health professionals, the new online ACs model emerged as a valuable solution not only for the contingent situation, but also in a long-term perspective to reach more women during pregnancy and to early support them throughout the maternal care pathway. This study shows that the collaborative approach to co-innovate healthcare services provision, such as with ACs online, facilitates the creation of, long-lasting, and integrated solutions in healthcare, to be used also after pandemic period. Finally, despite this action-research is context-specific, the findings presented in this paper may help other healthcare organizations innovate their own strategies in ACs’ provision.

Keywords: Healthcare services provision; Value co-creation; e-health/m-health; Antenatal classes; Maternal care pathway; COVID-19 pandemic; action research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s43039-021-00045-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ijmark:v:2022:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s43039-021-00045-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/43039

DOI: 10.1007/s43039-021-00045-6

Access Statistics for this article

Italian Journal of Marketing is currently edited by Daniele Dalli

More articles in Italian Journal of Marketing from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().