Towards Patients as Innovators: Open Innovation in Health Care

One of the recent developments in the health care sector has been the use of Web 2.0-based technology. This is promising for two reasons. Firstly, the Web 2.0 provides features that help to give patients an active voice. Secondly, patients obtain easier access to health-related information and gain a better understanding of their health status. This chapter focuses on patients as innovators and takes a case-based approach to explore an open innovation perspective on Health 2.0. It derives a taxonomy of real-world platforms in Health 2.0 settings and presents experience from a large-scale open innovation pilot.