SROI Methods for Impact Assessment in Economy of Wellbeing

Population ageing represents one of the major challenges that contemporary society is going to face in the coming years. This phenomenon is putting high pressure on the healthcare system and makes it necessary to identify specific instruments ensuring to live longer in healthy conditions, concept also referred to as healthy ageing. In this view, the European NESTORE H2020 project is a multi-dimensional and personalized virtual coaching technology for the enhancement of people’s well-being and quality of life after their 65. However, the assessment of health promotion strategies like NESTORE is a thorny issue, being the benefits achieved in the long-term as a result of investments incurred for many years. Decision-makers need methodologies that show that what is invested today will pay back through the saving generated in the long-term. Traditionally, cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is employed: however, CBA has historically been under discussion. In recent times, social return on investment (SROI) methodology has been promoted as a more ‘holistic’ approach for demonstrating value-for-money of initiatives. Given the lack of evidence concerning SROI analysis of technologies, the authors developed and validated a model to perform a SROI analysis when evaluating innovative technologies promoting healthy ageing. To address the research question, an inductive approach has been employed, selecting as a starting point the real case of NESTORE, under the assumption of its future implementation in the Lombardy Region, in the autonomous community of Catalonia and in the province of South Holland. SROI for NESTORE has been defined involving as stakeholders the healthcare systems of the areas under consideration, beneficiaries (senior adults in health between 40 and 79 years) living in the three areas, the economic system and beneficiaries’ familiar caregivers. In all the three areas analysed, the SROI ratios (calculated over a time horizon of 10 years) are higher than 1; therefore, the project results to be value-for-money. The result has been validated by NESTORE Consortium itself. This study contributes to the existing literature on the SROI, confirming that there is room for its application when dealing with healthcare technologies. In addition, it represents a useful aid for NESTORE decision-makers and distributors, supporting them in the definition of a suitable and detailed exploitation strategy for the initiative.