Defining Smart Community in the Context of Healthcare Efficiency in the UK: Mapping the Evolution of a Concept

This literature review article creates a new definition for the concept of smart community and applies the concept to the issue of improving healthcare efficiency in the UK. The definition emerges by mapping the evolution of the smart community concept from the mid-1990s up to 2020. The emergent concept is then applied to healthcare efficiency through discussion about related concepts including smart cities, coproduction, social capital, social computing, and cyber physical systems. The review takes a qualitative approach to exploring literature about concepts, an approach that recognises and engages with the complex interconnectedness of terminology in the digital sphere. Smart community was selected because it originated in response to financial crisis. The relevance to theory is creating a context-specific definition of smart community. By defining smart community in the context of healthcare, insights have emerged that could be useful to practice as well as theory.