Web services in the Dutch healthcare insurance sector : expected versus achieved benefits

The new and upcoming buzz word according to the Harvard Business Review (2001) is web service or open network environment. This is a new approach of IT to support business processes which is being applied by an increasing number of companies. It involves companies buying or renting information technologies as services provided over the internet rather than owning and maintaining all their own hardware and software. The main objective of this research project is to improve the insight into the implementation of web services and the benefit obtained in the Dutch healthcare insurance sector. The research consists of three data gathering methods, beginning with (1) a literature study, (2) a questionnaire and (3) a case study.