Abstract
The shift of the healthcare focus from the hospital towards the local and domicile levels (Integrated Home Care Service) can be mentioned as one of the most relevant evolutionary trends in the world healthcare sector. As a consequence, the average human life-span is increasing and moreover it is possible to note the growth of a world population suffering from chronic diseases, which, if connected to the higher average people’s age as in most cases, will require health services to organize a timely field assistance up to the patient’s house. In fact, the hospitals, within this technological evolution, will become places for healing acute diseases for short time periods only: the remainder will be redirected to its own geographical area. The Integrated Home Care Service requires a major organisational-logistics effort, by identifying and applying innovative healthcare management models, for addressing the local assistance and health technologies distribution to this target population. Considering these needs, the objective of the research herein presented is to identify the features of the various distribution models available for health technologies (with particular reference to medical equipments and pharmaceuticals) and to unfold all their strengths and weaknesses in order to develop a taxonomy for classifying them.