Patients in long-time hospitalization or with intractable diseases tend to face alienation from society and suffer from inconvenience. Catalog Gift, gift catalog for patients in hospitals, is a novel solution to improve... [ view full abstract ]
Patients in long-time hospitalization or with intractable diseases tend to face alienation from society and suffer from inconvenience. Catalog Gift, gift catalog for patients in hospitals, is a novel solution to improve quality of life (QOL). It provides products such as hot-water bag made with rubber for wet suit that is soft prevent low temperature burn, and toothpaste with no-risk for aspiration. It is sold to people to visit relatives in hospitals as gift for patients.
Catalog Gift can solve both problem; reach for distributed customers and patients’ economic difficulties. There are various kinds of diseases, and patients are made to suffer from different kinds of symptom caused by different diseases and individual’s peculiarity. There has been less incentive for pharmaceutical firms to develop drugs for rare diseases because markets of drugs for rare diseases are small. Even there does not come to be new drugs, Patients of rare diseases do not want only drugs but also way to improve quality of life.
There have been some projects of participatory design with patients (for example, Shaw, 1985; Stevens et al., 2003; Wu, 2005), and patient innovation (Kuenne et al., 2013; Kanstrup et al., 2015). Lettl et al. (2006) pointed that one of success factors for innovations at medical care is to treat user as inventor. Patient innovation is one of hopeful ways to make QOL better.
However there are still three barriers to develop sustainable solution for better QOL for patients in long-time hospitalization. First is size of markets. Even if number of affected is not small, they tend to face economic difficulties because of large medical expenses and inability to work. Second is difficulty of matching between patient with idea and producers. Third is difficulty of distribution because patients are under treatment in distributed medical facilities.
These are reasons of little availability of products for rare diseases. On the other hand, producers of products for patients tend need effective ways to reach distributed customers and recognition of patients’ needs.
Moreover, motives for user innovation developed to satisfy needs in everyday life is prevented by a market failure (De Jong et. al, 2015). This tendency is also applied to drug development (von Hippel et al., 2016). There needs to be a way to develop sustainable patient innovation for ones in long-time hospitalization.
Gift catalog for patients is a novel solution for patients, and developed by Naoki Chiba, formally patient with cardiac disease. He is co-founder of CAN net, a non-profit organization of patient’s self-help group with formally patients and experts of multiple field.
CAN net hold workshops for cancer patients to share their experiences and achieve knowledge for fighting diseases. Various kinds of lectures such as financial planning, beauty are given at workshops. Patients discuss and share their experiences after taking lectures. CAN net has build networks with various kinds of manufacturers, specialists and patients through holding workshops.
Chiba came to recognize demand of coordination among patients with special needs, products for special needs and financial sources through holding workshops. He found that gift catalog for patients in hospitals were effective way to solve such problem. Community support is effective for development and diffusion of user innovation (Franke & Shah, 2003). However it is difficulty for patients in hospitals to attend workshops and communicate with other patients. There is need of effective way to bring community support to patients in hospitals.
He and Junko Sugiyama, representative director of CAN net has launched gift catalog project in end of 2013. Sugiyama is a patient with ulcerative colitis. She has contributed the activities as a patient of a rare disease. This project is planned and directed by patient and formally patient. Catalog Gift is a patient innovation itself.
They established GIFTRee, a business division of CAN net for publishing gift catalog and merchandising activities. Patients at CAN net have selected items through discussion among patients, and collected patients’ opinion about items. Patients’ participation in selecting products enables to choose goods that meet patients’ needs, and find undefined benefit of products for patients. Benefits depicted from patients’ discussion do not work as source of promotion but also feedback for developing and modifying products.
I am planning to conduct interview with Chiba, the inventor of this scheme, other participants from CAN net members, and suppliers of products carried on the catalog. And I am also going to analyze patient survey data. I would like to continue analysis of this novel project to draw success factors to develop sustainable solution for better QOL for patients. GIFTRee is preparing to publish the first volume of the catalog in June 2016. I am also planning consumer survey of Catalog Gift by August.
