Patient Innovation

The Gulbenkian Human Development Programme joined forces with the Gulbenkian Programme for Innovation in Health to support the development of the Patient Innovation platform, a multilingual, not-for-profit international social network that allows patients and carers to share solutions they have created for themselves or the people in their care to improve their quality of life. For example, a patient with an apparently incurable problem in the aortic artery developed a valve for himself that was successfully implanted by his doctor, thereby resolving the issue. Following this experience, another 30 patients across the world have now benefited from this valve model. This is the kind of information sharing and mutual assistance that drives this initiative.

The project is led by the Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics and is the result of international cooperation involving the following partners: the Information and Communication Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon Portugal, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, MIT Portugal, Peter Pribilla-Stiftung, the Institute of Molecular Medicine, and Innosabi.

In July, the Foundation presented  the Patient Innovation awards for the first time as part of the work carried out by the international conference Open and User Innovation. Awards for the most outstanding innovations were given to three patients, two carers and one collaborator from the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom and Portugal.

Over 500 solutions shared by patients and carers from 30 different countries are currently available.