Approximately 537 million people are suffering from diabetes today. Total direct costs of diabetes worldwide are estimated at $966 billion in 2021. Given the growth of medical expenditures, increasing value in health care will require improvements in quality as well as reductions in cost (McKinsey, 2021). Especially the integration of digital health technology (DHT) that focus on diabetes can help to improve the care of diabetics (Klonoff et al., 2013). For this reason, CSS one of the biggest health insurances in Switzerland, is planning to introduce the “SwissDiabeter” clinic. This is strongly inspired by the dutch “Diabeter” clinic, one of the largest clinics for type 1 diabetes in Europe serving as a role model in the field of  value based healthcare and the integration of digitization  (VBHC, 2024).

Nevertheless, it has been shown that the degree of digitalization in the Swiss healthcare system is below average and needs more digital interfaces (McKinsey, 2021). However, for the benefits of DHT to materialize in the field of diabetes, healthcare professionals must first accept and adopt the different technologies (Hsieh, 2015). Especially, what helps to achieve such a transformation is, its leader’s vision that links digitalization to the organizational need and to the new roles of the personnel (Sainger, 2018). Therefore, this research will tackle the following questions:

How can we successfully introduce new technological processes such as the SwissDiabeter model in the diabetes healthcare context?

• Understanding SwissDiabeter: What are the changes that SwissDiabeter will introduce? (comparison of status quo with SwissDiabeter)
• Understanding the barriers: What are the main barriers when a provider is asked to implement these changes? (interviews with health care professionals)
• Formulating solutions: What are potential solutions / strategies to overcome these barriers? (best practices, experience from Diabeter, expert interviews)

Method: ~13 semi-structured interviews with endocrinologists, diabetologists and hospital management staff, health insurance , patients association, change management experts; interviews will be organized with help of CSS.

Expected results: A detailed map of existing barriers and concrete catalogue of strategies how to promote HCP adoption of digital health technologies in the Swiss Diabetes context.

Timeline & milestones:

• March, 4^th 2024 : onboarding kick-off with CSS
• Mid of March: first draft of interview questions catalogue, getting feedback of market research department of CSS & set up all the interview meetings
• End of March: finished interview questions catalogue
• Beginning of April: start interviewing 13-15 of experts, eventually visit in the Netherlands
• End of May: finished all the interviews
• End of June: finished all the coding of the interviews
• Beginning of July: preliminary results
• End of August: results presentation for CSS & finished Master/ Bachelor thesis

Contact: odile-florence.giger@unisg.ch