Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Email: s. Patients are increasingly recognized as playing important roles in improving health services. To ascertain how diffusion of an innovation, My Medication Passport, occurred and roles played by patients in it. Case study: quantitative mapping of innovation's diffusion and analysis of the routes and occupations of those through whom the innovation spread; documentary analysis; reflective assessment of patient's roles.
Geographical spread of innovation; occupations of individuals; types of organizations using the innovation. The innovation spread from initial development and use in Northwest London across the UK and beyond. Patients identified and introduced potential audiences and users to MMP, using social, organizational, sectoral, lay and professional networks to do so. Patients, carers and members of the public are increasingly recognized as playing or as having the potential to play an important role in improving health services.
This can include leading and developing innovative solutions to problems that matter to them. Patient developed innovations rarely spread beyond their own personal use.
Oliveira et al 1 suggest that when patients develop innovations, these are mostly used to help themselves, or those they care directly for, but are rarely shared more widely. The majority of the innovations focused on increasing the patient's autonomy and quality of life. Lack of diffusion of patient innovation was due to significant barriers to doing so, including inventors' lack of time, skills and opportunities to develop their innovations, and lack of contact with communities who are likely to use the innovation.
Denis et al 2 theorize that the dissemination of innovations is not necessarily a linear process which adheres to a plan, and that the process of diffusion can be discerned as an interaction between the innovation with its key characteristics and an adopting system, composed of actors with a set of values, interests and power dependencies.
