The Patient Revolution. New design perspectives in healthcare innovative processes

Abstract | This paper explores the emerging role of patients and caregivers as user innovators within design processes. The phenomenon of user-driven healthcare has been recently renamed ‘patient innovation’ (Olivera et al. 2015). The first part of the paper presents a literature review to explore the phenomenon of patient innovation, especially in Italy. The second part analyses a range of European research projects on patient innovation, carried out and participated by makerspaces and fab labs, according to several indicators, such as the role of patients, the role of healthcare’ stakeholders/providers, the design processes implied and the outputs of these design processes. The final part of the paper systematizes the results and use case analysis in order to qualify the nature of collaboration between different healthcare stakeholders as a key to design innovative roles, skills, spaces for patients, doctors and institutions.