Abstract
Clinicians face difficult treatment decisions in contexts that are not well addressed by available evidence as formulated based on research. The digitization of medicine provides an opportunity for clinicians to collaborate with researchers and data scientists on solutions to previously ambiguous and seemingly insolvable questions. But these groups tend to work in isolated environments, and do not communicate or interact effectively. Clinicians are typically buried in the weeds and exigencies of daily practice such that they do not recognize or act on ways to improve knowledge discovery. Researchers may not be able to identify the gaps in clinical knowledge. For data scientists, the main challenge is discerning what is relevant in a domain that is both unfamiliar and complex. Each type of domain expert can contribute skills unavailable to the other groups. “Health hackathons” and “data marathons”, in which diverse participants work together, can leverage the current ready availability of digital data to discover new knowledge. Utilizing the complementary skills and expertise of these talented, but functionally divided groups, innovations are formulated at the systems level. As a result, the knowledge discovery process is simultaneously democratized and improved, real problems are solved, cross-disciplinary collaboration is supported, and innovations are enabled.
Highlights
Almost 30 years ago, researchers began a systematic study of innovation by end users and user firms
User-centered innovation processes are very different from the traditional, manufacturer-centric model, in which products and services are developed by manufacturers in a closed way, with the manufacturers using patents, copyrights, and other protections to prevent imitators from free riding on their innovation investments
The trend toward democratization of innovation applies to information products such as software and to physical products, and is being driven by two related technical trends: (1) the steadily improving design capabilities that advances in computer hardware and software make possible for users; (2) the steadily improving ability of individual users to combine and coordinate their innovation-related efforts via new communication media such as the Internet
Summary
Almost 30 years ago, researchers began a systematic study of innovation by end users and user firms. Quantitative studies of user innovation document that many of the most important and novel products and processes in a range of fields have been developed by user firms and by individual users. In the specific instance of product and service development, a major divergence of interests between user and custom manufacturer does exist: the user wants to get precisely what it needs, to the extent that it can afford to do so.
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