Patient-led innovation in healthcare: The value of the 'user' perspective.

Across European healthcare provision, the mantra of patient and public involvement is gaining momentum. Their voice needs to be heard among the multiple stakeholders whom each have an interest in healthcare innovation; governments, individual healthcare provider organizations, industry, and higher education. Informed by their context, they all have their own 'user' perspective and motivations for being involved in healthcare innovation. What they have in common is a shared desire to establish methods that will help facilitate high quality, fit for purpose innovation while also reducing the time it takes for an innovation to be accessible and used in practice. Historically, the professional 'user' voice has had a stronger input than that of the patient. This paper explores some of the reasons for that, discusses the value of promoting a stronger patient user voice as the catalyst for innovation and presents an approach for innovation that moves beyond involving the patient to one that begins and then leads with the patient perspective. For the purposes of this paper, the terms 'user' or patient will be used to include carers and the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]