Abstract

In large parts of Europe, the development of healthcare is subject to contrasting forces. On the one hand, there has been an explosion in spending and, at the same time, governments are faced with strict budget constraints. On the other hand, public healthcare is under pressure to be innovative, technologically advanced and to provide increasingly better quality of services. In this context, eprocurement can be seen as an instrument to offer a solution to the first issue of this dilemma. However, e-procurement initiatives in such domain have not been widely deployed, and most of them have not fully delivered the expected benefits so far. In order to investigate this scenario in more detail, a case study of a wide e-procurement implementation in an Italian Local Healthcare Agency has been examined. This experience is considered remarkable because of the comprehensive design of the e-procurement system, the differentiation of adopted tools, the long-lasting experimentations and the multiple solutions implemented and in progress. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct, by following the Lam’s (2000) knowledge management approach, the different steps that led to a widespread introduction of e-procurement as a new operating practice in this LHA, by thorough redesigning supply purchasing, supply chain and logistics processes.

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