Healthcare system in the digital era: The telemedicine contribution to overcoming the social boundaries in an uncertain time

The health system's role for the welfare of the community and the growth and development of nations is widely known, and Business Economics scholars have paid great attention to the study of the sector. This paper focuses on a particular aspect of health care and aims to analyse the intellectual capital (IC) in the healthcare system regarding telemedicine's contribution at Covid-19. The healthcare sector is “knowledge-intensive”. For this reason, the study of IC becomes central in Business Economics studies that are increasingly oriented towards enhancing the intangible resources used and created by organisations. Recent scholars have investigated the development of knowledge-based activities as a significant factor in adopting innovation in healthcare organisations and institutions. However, scholars have paid little attention to the contribution of telemedicine to the generation of IC. This paper aims to bridge the gap focusing on a particular aspect of health care and analyse the IC in the healthcare system regarding telemedicine's contribution at Covid-19. Notably, we focus on how digital transformation and the knowledge management system used by telemedicine could contribute to the intellectual capital in the healthcare sector. To comply with the paper aim, we use a qualitative research method based on a case study particularly suitable for IC in health care studies. More precisely, we analyse a non-profit organisation that for over 15 years has offered a free multi-specialist teleconsultation service to answer medical questions from the most disadvantaged places in the world. The findings show that telemedicine can develop and share knowledge in disadvantaged areas of the world . The IC makes the new business model capable of contributing to the improvement of the health conditions of the entire population, including the most fragile. Thus this research provides an original contribution to the literature on IC at the time of Covid-19.