Co-creation and Change in Healthcare

Abstract

Healthcare involves multiple actors. In such a system, the creation of value shifts from being a top-down to an interactive process. This interactive process emphasizes in particular the importance of time and place dimensions and the network relationships of service (eco)systems in determining value. This kind of co-creation is critical to improving healthcare services, enhancing the quality of care, increasing patient and healthcare provider satisfaction, and contributing to primary healthcare reform and change. Traditionally, healthcare offerings have been regarded as the processes through which patients passively receive care from service providers, including, for example, clinicians, nurses, and allied healthcare professionals. Currently, however, patients are increasingly seen as active contributors to their health, so it would be desirable that in the creation and design of healthcare offerings, the delivery of the solutions to passive receivers would not be emphasized. Instead, the focus needs to be shifted from an individual-centered and output-based value creation toward a more interaction-based approach of co-creation. Here, co-creation refers to a process of gathering input from various stakeholders (e.g. patients and families) with the common goal of producing a service, product, or process. Co-creation opens the healthcare service designing and development up to a wide range of voices that would normally never be involved. The ultimate goal is to approach issues from a new perspective and come away with better services, products, and processes.