Social Innovation in Medical Care: Forms, Mechanisms and Transformative Potential
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2025.3.2818Keywords:
social innovation, medical care, transformative social innovation, health care, community, doctor, patientAbstract
This study addresses the question of how social innovations can address pressing health care challenges and how their transformative potential is created. The object of the study is the descriptions of 24 cases from Europe, presented on the Ashoka Foundation website on the topic of health care.
Interest in social innovations is associated with the assumption that technological improvements, austerity regimes and the redistribution of responsibility for health services between public and private health care are not enough to produce systemic shifts. It is assumed that social innovations, produced by doctors or independent civil actors together with doctors, can become points of growth and the production of transformations “from the bottom up”. The article shows the diversity of forms and mechanisms of social innovations, which are presented as a dynamic process of involving new groups of participants in changing sustainable practices and institutions. The work is based on a «relational» approach to understanding social innovations, which go through several circles of interactions before changing the status quo.
Acknowledgements. The article uses the materials of the study carried out with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research within the framework of scientific project No. 20-511-00047. The author thanks HSE Master's students 2023-2024 Susan Adiele and Antony Enognegase for reviewing the database and preparing a primary list of cases that meet the purpose of the study.
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