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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the extant literature regarding the exploitation of digital technologies by illustrating how this type of IT can influence business process improvements in the healthcare industry.

The paper reports an illustrative case study for MSD Italy, the Italian subsidiary of the USA-based company Merck & Co., Inc. The group sells drugs for human use in Italy but is also active in the veterinary (MSD Animal Health) industry, with Vree Health, and in solutions and software-based services for the healthcare industry.

The results show that the adoption of digital technologies could improve the performance of main healthcare business processes, particularly those processes that can be simplified with the adoption of information technology. More specifically, digital technologies could increase efficiency and, at the same time, allow for the delivery of better quality and reduced response times, with many benefits for several stakeholders, such as national health systems, clinicians and patients.

Although some studies report the need for effective business processes for sustainable healthcare systems, there is a lack of literature regarding the specific implications of the adoption of such digital technologies for the business process management of healthcare firms. This paper attempts to fill in this gap.

This paper aims to study the extent of the transformation of European manufacturing companies towards the factory of the future (FoF) and related concepts, e.g. Industry 4.0 and digitalisation.

A qualitative survey design was used to investigate the areas, patterns and elements for implementing FoF. A total of 92 responses from manufacturing firms of Alpine regions were collected and analysed, followed by in-depth interviews with a subset of respondents to identify common challenges, drivers and opportunities for the transformation.

Manufacturing companies are gaining awareness on their needs and gaps in the FoF path, the implications on business strategy and the rates of innovation and technology adoption. Nevertheless, they still need to shape their organisational structures (e.g. from highly centralised to more collaborative ones) and nurture their managerial capabilities in operations and supply chain management, and customer relationships, only partially based on FoF technologies.

This study aims to contribute to recent literature and practice of FoF (and related concepts) by depicting a picture of the possible areas of intervention, main issues and gaps (especially in terms of skills, supply chain and customer relationships) of manufacturing companies in their digital transformation. The qualitative research design and its scope represent the main limitations.

This paper provides a systemic overview for FoF by encompassing the technological, strategic, managerial and organisational perspectives of digitalisation in manufacturing and integrating the insights from a multi-sectorial and multi-dimensional analysis.