The patient as innovation leader in the welfare system

Research Project, 2019 – 2021

It is increasingly common for patients and citizens to be invited to develop public services. It is now time to invite public and other actors to the patient’s lifeworld. With the patient as innovation leader in the welfare system, the starting point is their lived experience and unique life event knowledge.

Only with focus on the patient’s entirety – not organizations’ internal processes – the existing fragmented welfare system can be abandoned for a system that better supports the patient’s value creation. Within the present project, processes, tools and models will be developed and tested to enable patients to successfully lead innovation activities. At system level, this leads to the development and testing of structures and strategies that create favorable conditions for innovation. Center for Healthcare Improvement (CHI) at Chalmers University of Technology is leading the project. Other participating organizations include two nonprofit organizations in which patients and relatives drive innovations, two public service organizations focusing on patient involvement, social sustainability and equality, and two organizations with expertise in innovation facilitation and communication and dissemination. The project also seeks to broaden the innovation concept by explicitly integrating sustainability: by including diversity in the innovation process, better prerequisites are given to address unequal conditions and to reach health and well-being