Customer relationship management systems (CRMS) in the healthcare environment: A systematic literature review

Yahia Baashar; Hitham Alhussian; Ahmed Patel; Gamal Alkawsi; Ahmed Ibrahim Alzahrani; Osama Alfarraj; Gasim Hayder

doi:10.1016/j.csi.2020.103442

Customer relationship management systems (CRMS) in the healthcare environment: A systematic literature review

Comput Stand Interfaces. 2020 Aug:71:103442. doi: 10.1016/j.csi.2020.103442. Epub 2020 Apr 10.

Authors

Yahia Baashar¹, Hitham Alhussian², Ahmed Patel³, Gamal Alkawsi¹, Ahmed Ibrahim Alzahrani⁴, Osama Alfarraj⁴, Gasim Hayder¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Graduate Studies, Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN), Kajang 43000, Malaysia.
² Center for Research in Data Science (CERDAS), Institute of Autonomous Systems, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar 32610, Malaysia.
³ Computer Networks and Security Laboratory, State University of Ceara, Fortaleza 60020-181, Brazil.
⁴ Computer Science Department, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

Customer relationship management (CRM) is an innovative technology that seeks to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability by acquiring, developing, and maintaining effective customer relationships and interactions with stakeholders. Numerous researches on CRM have made significant progress in several areas such as telecommunications, banking, and manufacturing, but research specific to the healthcare environment is very limited. This systematic review aims to categorise, summarise, synthesise, and appraise the research on CRM in the healthcare environment, considering the absence of coherent and comprehensive scholarship of disparate data on CRM. Various databases were used to conduct a comprehensive search of studies that examine CRM in the healthcare environment (including hospitals, clinics, medical centres, and nursing homes). Analysis and evaluation of 19 carefully selected studies revealed three main research categories: (i) social CRM 'eCRM'; (ii) implementing CRMS; and (iii) adopting CRMS; with positive outcomes for CRM both in terms of patients relationship/communication with hospital, satisfaction, medical treatment/outcomes and empowerment and hospitals medical operation, productivity, cost, performance, efficiency and service quality. This is the first systematic review to comprehensively synthesise and summarise empirical evidence from disparate CRM research data (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed) in the healthcare environment. Our results revealed that substantial gaps exist in the knowledge of using CRM in the healthcare environment. Future research should focus on exploring: (i) other potential factors, such as patient characteristics, culture (of both the patient and hospital), knowledge management, trust, security, and privacy for implementing and adopting CRMS and (ii) other CRM categories, such as mobile CRM (mCRM) and data mining CRM.

Keywords: Customer relationship management (CRM); Healthcare environment; Healthcare industry; Information and communication technologies (ICT); Patient relationship management (PRM).

Publication types

Review