Introduction to E-Commerce in Healthcare Industries of UK

This study explores the need for the introduction of e-commerce in the healthcare industry of the UK and its potential benefits. It discusses the current challenges faced by the industry and the role of e-commerce in improving efficiency and reducing costs. The study also examines different types of e-commerce infrastructure and their applications in healthcare. Overall, it highlights the potential of e-commerce to bring significant changes to the healthcare industry in the UK.

E - COMMERCE
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Tables of Content
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................2
PART A...........................................................................................................................................3
PART B...........................................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
RERENCES.....................................................................................................................................9
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INTRODUCTION
Internet commerce or electronic commerce simply means selling and buying various services or
various commercial and non-commercial goods over the internet. This also includes the transfer
of data and money of the concerned consumer. Electronic commerce includes all sorts of
commercial transactions using the internet but mostly selling of physical products in the online
platform is encouraged. In 1994, the 11th of August the first ever sale of a good was registered
where a person made an effort to sell a CD through an American platform for retail businesses.
Since then, the concept of e-commerce witnessed continuous growth and development as the
independent freelancers, independent small business and even large organizations understood
that the scope of selling the services and goods is much greater than that of any offline retail
method that is used traditionally. E-commerce sales of retail industries are expected to reach $27
trillion by 2020 in the global arena. Hence, the present study concentrates upon the idea of e-
commerce in Healthcare industries of UK (Bartlett, Y.K., 2015).
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PART A
Regarding the analysis of the problem, a research question has been synthesized for solving the
respective research problem.
Research Question: What is the need for the introduction of e-commerce in the Healthcare
Industries of the UK?
Purpose of the study
The Healthcare Industry of the UK holds revenue more than one-seventh of the total economy of
the nation, which is approximately one trillion dollars. Adding on to it, the cost of escalating
Health Care systems, which has been very high. The main ambition of this assignment is to
enumerate the need for the introduction of e-commerce in the Healthcare Industry of the UK, as
it possesses the ability to carry out the Health Care business more precisely and with ease (. This
will also immensely reduce the cost of escalation or development of the industry as e-commerce
consumes 2% of the total revenue (Amponsah and Mensah, 2016). This also eradicates or curbs
the need for distribution, by providing a software client to maintain a sworn network, which also
provides support for all the queries evolved from it.
Rationale of the study
This study is mainly concerned with the introduction of e-commerce in the Healthcare Industry,
as it is being duly afflicted and tormented by the conventional health-care practices, escalating
service costs, declination of benefits served to the patients, and excessively poor services
rendered to the customers. According to a recent survey, approximately 59 percent of natives
have told that there is a dire need for the introduction of a major change, in the Healthcare
system. The majority of Health Care computer networks are custodial thus there is a lack of
proper flow of communication, as each network supports different communication ideals. The
process of reference within the providers is costly and disorganized, most of the times including
a fifteen step referral process and approximately amounting to $40, per reference. E-commerce,
with its systematizing ability, have the appearance of assisting the Healthcare Industry and
connecting with the sellers, buyers', and trading partners through the use of electronic
information technologies, by carrying out various business transactions among them. Combining
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the infrastructures of business and electronics, e-commerce entertains traditional business
transactions and allows them to transact electronically by ignoring every boundary separating
them. E-commerce has two types of frameworks: (1) Web-based (2) Electronic Data Interchange
(EDI).
Web-Based Infrastructure:
This infrastructure is generally implemented in B2C type transactions, i.e., Business to
Consumer. B2C e-commerce is a marketplace on a virtual platform to provide information about
medical services and products to the users.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI):
This is commonly used for B2B types of transactions, i.e., Business to Business. B2B healthcare
e-commerce allows the transferring of information and enables transactions among insurance
agencies, offices of the doctors, vendors, and federal and state regulators.
Thereby, these processes simplify the delivery of health-care. The proactive management of
illness and implementation of preventive maintenance of health which avoids prolonged stays in
hospitals. Treatment tracking is also possible with the establishment of e-commerce in
Healthcare. Hence this study makes it quite evident that its start of e-trade in the Health Care
Industries of the UK can bring drastic changes in the functioning of the industries (G.A., 2017).
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PART B
Healthcare industry of the United Kingdom:
The industry of healthcare occupies over one-seventh of the economy of the United States with
as much as revenue of $32 billion annually. A large portion of the revenue is spent on the
increasing costs of the healthcare system. Customer spending for long-lasting medical equipment
like hearing aids and eyewear, etc., has touched $48.5 billion with more than 4% increase every
year. In 2016, customers spent an approximated $322.7 billion on prescription drugs at
independent or chain drugstores. E-commerce has the capacity of transacting some healthcare
business in a more efficient and cost-effective way (Greenhalgh and Fahy, 2015). With the
introduction of e-commerce, several methods offer immediate improvement. Despite the fact that
a huge amount is lost to maintain the costs of the healthcare industry, the industry of healthcare
is troubled by increasing costs of the service, inadequate customer service, and declining benefits
of the patient. This assignment explains the weakness of healthcare methods or practices that are
traditional, discussion and reports of business-to-customer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2C)
models of e-commerce along with managerial implications, state-of-art technologies, and
comments on e-commerce.
Traditional Healthcare Practice
A number of the healthcare industries maintained their well-established trading methods, to be
precise; they have concentrated share expansion along with reducing the costs of operation. The
supply chain of modern healthcare is very inflexible and is inspired by traditional, existing power
bases, and legacy technologies (Davies, et al., 2019). The link between the patient and the
provider in light of recent healthcare studies has become nonexistent.
An Introduction to E-Commerce
E-commerce can be introduced as it appears to be ready to support the industry of healthcare
with redesigning applications. E-commerce indicates the conduction of business transactions
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with the help of electronic information technologies among the sellers, other trading partners,
and buyers. E-commerce combines electronic infrastructures and business and this allows the
business transactions of the traditional sort to be carried out electronically neglecting the
geographical or physical barriers between them (Hollis, et al., 2015). The infrastructures
involved in e-commerce are of two types:
 Web-based
 EDI (electronic data interchange)
The infrastructure that is based on the web provides a universal infrastructure (the global
Transport Control Protocol-Internet Protocol network commonly termed the Internet) and a
software client (the browser) and these acts as a ready-made platform. The e-commerce that is
based on a browser’ use to interact besides the server (Web) performs the purchase processing.
The above-mentioned arrangement is a particular arrangement that is commonly used for B2C-
type activities while for B2B-type transaction EDI is used to a large extent. The providers and
payers in the healthcare industry are considering transferring their B2B and B2C transactions to
the Web as the company’s topmost preference (Vakeel et al., 2017).
E-commerce is consisting of different technology, collaboration, and business processes within
the shareholders. In the area of healthcare, e-trade possesses the ability to commence adequate
and useful undertakings within a payer, providers, managers, and sick persons at a comparatively
cheaper price. With the awakening of electronic commerce and the internet, the predictions for a
huge growth rate automatically gets united with the world wide web, and also the huge jump in
traffic in every one hundred days and allows 63.5 million citizens of the United Kingdom and
still growing.
Healthcare Industry and B2B e-trade:
In UK, the main stress is given upon the supply chain. The three goals of B2B are as follows:
Reduction of transaction costs, improving efficiency and providing information of actual time to
everyone who is involved; the efficiency of B2B is improved by simple methods of the delivery
of goods and services of healthcare (Borrelli, et al., 2015). Physicians do interactions with
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impersonal systems to address prescripts, to review patient information plus to order laboratory
tests.
Information grants status records like utilization of the hospital, tracking the treatment, and
updates of information that are exchanged. Reporting is obtained after all communication
standards are streamlined, all sorts of healthcare constituents are linked with the Internet
backbone, and actively administering information (Gillies, 2016). This is supported by the
decision of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners in support on the Uniform
Electronic Transactions Act, 1999, that aims in legalizing e-signatures and records that require
patterned formats, identifiers, and codes of all kind of electronic activities within health-
insurance providers and payers before 2002.
Data Security:
Going beyond the obligations posed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
(HIPAA), the generalization of data security problems are utilized to include timely access and
data integrity (Turban, et al., 2015). Adding on to it is the confidentiality of the patients it bears.
For the implementation of hierarchical access to the selective databases, i.e., records of the
patients for approved personnel, the choices for technologies are key-based authentication,
digital signatures, and biometrics. For keeping the medical data safe, there has been an
implementation of tiny transmitters in ID badges that helps to shut down the application running
on the device, if the person moves more than fifty feet from the console.
Advanced Medical Standards:
XML (extensible markup language), is an advanced medical standard for permitting effective
communication among operating systems, independent hardware platforms or database
management systems(G.H., Roderick,2019). The application that runs on the basis of XML uses
the definition of the end user. It is designed to transport and store data through the language
being self-explanatory (Liang, 2018).
Wireless Technology:
It helps the Health care Industry by providing an accessible network for all the employees, either
receiving or sending information, irrespective of the location (Turban, 2015). The tasks also deal
with updating the charges of a patient, vital reading posts, decision making of treatments, etc.
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CONCLUSION
E-commerce has ample elements and pros to offer the Health Care Industry of the UK (Davies et
al., 2018). Despite the coupling of B2B and B2C internet infrastructures supported by the State-
of-Art Technologies, e-commerce appears as the perfect remedy for the illness caused, i.e., it will
be the best solution to cure the industry form the dire distress and exploitation of resources. The
ability to lower costs, improvement of quality, creating access to view the information regarding
patient records and services rendered, has been the strength of the concept. In order to attain
success, e-commerce provides measurable benefits to the consumers as well as the stakeholders.
Though there has been a sudden emergence of a new hurdle in the path of success in the concept
of e-commerce. The Health Care e-commerce arena has started to suffer a lack of confidence in
the minds of the investors in recent ventures, which primarily is undergoing missing profitability
and creation of poor markets. Poor returns with respect to investments, the desire to conceal
personal information and keeping loyalty on certain suppliers, has been the reason for the
unstable and sluggish growth of e-commerce in the Health Care Industry. Lastly, despite all these
ebb and flow, the zone of the e-commerce market is anticipated to reach $1 trillion,
approximately within a decade(Huxtable-Thomas,2018).
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