Toward Sustainable Transitions in Healthcare Systems

Over the past decades, a series of reform initiatives have been going through health systems of advanced welfare states, including the control of cost development, the tenability of health systems in globalizing economies, dissatisfaction about quality of treatment or quality of life, and the increasing importance of health problems related to lifestyles and life conditions. The reforms pursued to address these problems have led to rather fundamental changes in health systems, but not a true resolution of the persistent problems facing healthcare. This book seeks to investigate how we may understand current problems in health systems from the perspective of notions from transition and system innovation studies. Based on that understanding, what strategies, developed in other domains for bringing about transitions and system innovations, may contribute to further reforms of health systems?