Co-Design as Enabling Factor for Patient-Centred Healthcare: A Bibliometric Literature Review

Service design and in particular co-design are approaches able to align with the need of healthcare contexts of value-based and patient-centered processing through a participatory design of services. The purpose of this study is to identify the characteristics of co-design and its applicability to the reengineering of healthcare services, as well as to detect the peculiarities of the application of this approach in different geographical contexts. The methodology applied for the review, Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA), combines qualitative and quantitative perspectives. In detail, the analysis applied the paper citation networks and the co-word network analysis to detect the main research trends over time and to identify the most relevant publications. The results of the analysis highlight the backbone of literature on the application of co-design in healthcare as well as the advantages and the critical factors of the approach. Three main literature streams emerged concerning the integration of the approach at meso and micro level, the implementation of co-design at mega and macro level, and the impacts on non-clinical related outcomes. Moreover, the findings underline differences in co-design in terms of impacts and success factors in developed countries and economies in transition or developing countries. The analysis shows the potentially added value of the application of a participatory approach to the design and redesign of healthcare services both at different levels of the healthcare organization and in the contexts of developed countries and economies in transition or developing countries. The evidence also highlights potentialities and critical success factors of the application of co-design in healthcare services redesign.