NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND BUSINESS IN THE MEDICAL FIELD IN ROMANIA UNDER THE IMPACT OF DIGITALIZATION AND THE COVID-19 CRISIS.

The first medical activity privatized after 1990 was dentistry, and dentists were the first medical entrepreneurs in Romania. Today we are talking about a strong competitive market, a market in which we find ultra-performing clinics both in terms of logistics and that of doctors. When we talk today about health entrepreneurship, we are talking about an extremely vast field where we find doctors who run a business, a medical office, a pharmacy or managers who run a private clinic, a practice, a pharmacy, a laboratory, but also businesses with services related to the medical field (medical equipment, IT, medical insurance, marketing and medical training, etc.). The Romanian medical system, which is in full expansion, but marked by a multitude of acute problems to be solved, needs a strong private component. As the literature argues, private niche clinics and medical centers, either as an alternative to the exodus of health personnel or as a nursery of highly trained medical staff, contribute to increasing the quality of medical services and become an increasingly strong competitor of the state health system. In this paper want to present the state of entrepreneurship in the medical field in Romania, the variations of medical entrepreneurship, the stages of developing a business in the field of health, but also the most representative businesses in this field of activity that can be used as an example of good practice, referring of course to the current period which is extremely difficult but also profitable for the business environment in the medical field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]