Patient Democracy and Shared Decision Making

Patient democracy presupposes equality, respecting patients’ individual values and health care professionals’ recommendations. Through research and co-creation processes with patients and clinicians, we explore system-based solutions that enable patients to become involved in their own treatment. In 2015 we mapped out preliminary and international studies into ”state of the art”. In addition, we conducted two pre-studies within patient communication and created a generic tool for shared decision making. In 2016 we will carry out further research and development work in order to gain knowledge about how design and design methods contribute to this field and to develop the overall prospective needed for creating generic tools to help patients, relatives and health professionals in the decision making process about cancer treatment. The project is ongoing.