MIT Sloan Management Review Article on When Patients Become Innovators

Health care consumers are contributing their skills, money, and time to develop effective solutions that aren’t available on the commercial market.

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Patients are increasingly able to conceive and develop sophisticated medical devices and services to meet their own needs — often without any help from companies that produce or sell medical products. This “free” patient-driven innovation process enables them to benefit from important advances that are not commercially available. Patient innovation also can provide benefits to companies that produce and sell medical devices and services. For them, patient do-it-yourself efforts can be free R&D that informs and amplifies in-house development efforts.

About the Author

Harold DeMonaco is a visiting scientist at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Pedro Oliveira (@pedromoliveira) is a professor at Copenhagen Business School. Andrew Torrance (@lexvivo) is the Earl B. Shurtz Research Professor at the University of Kansas School of Law. Christiana von Hippel is a postdoctoral researcher at University of California Berkeley School of Public Health. Eric von Hippel is the T. Wilson (1953) Professor in Management and a professor of technological innovation at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

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