Addressing Patient Needs and Public Commitments in Health Technology Innovation: A Review of Patient and Public Engagement in Technology Development and Assessment

Objectives: The engagement of patients and lay publics is increasing across many contexts that influence technological innovation, including in the development and assessment of technologies. We sought to analyze how the engagement of patients and publics is conceptualized and pursued in two important innovation contexts: health technology assessment and health product development. Methods: We adapted scoping review methods to map concepts and evidence, searching 4 reference databases for health and social sciences from 1980 to December 2013 for English language studies on patient or public engagement in product development or technology assessment. Results: We included 91 articles after screening 4050 titles and abstracts and reviewing 192 full-text articles and compared approaches to engagement across 4 domains: (i) patients were engaged in both product development and technology assessment, but lay publics were only engaged in technology assessment; (ii) the common engagement goals of addressing values and mobilizing acceptance meant different things across contexts; (iii) engagement efforts created similar resource and epistemic requirements; and, (iv) neither context consistently identified the influence of engagement on other innovation-relevant contexts. Conclusions: Comparison of the product development and assessment contexts provides new insight into the potential for patient and public engagement as part of a cumulative and collective approach to health technology innovation. Such an approach will need to address common requirements and challenges related to material resources and epistemic imperatives, and overcome inconsistencies in how patients and publics are understood and involved.