Enhancing co-responsibility for patient engagement

In this paper we share a theoretical perspective of co-responsibility, developed by a consortium of a university, a private company and a hospital. On this perspective we will base design interventions towards improving the experience and specifically the engagement of cardiovascular patients after the disease has occurred, a phase referred to as secondary prevention. Co-responsibility argues that responsibilities of different people in society are intertwined with each other, not in the sense that people share the same responsibilities, but in the sense that people’s responsibilities are interdependent. We discuss the opportunities and challenges for design from a co-responsibility perspective through examples of co-responsibility encouraging design artefacts. We argue that such an approach offers the opportunity to support more sustainable engagement by attuning patients, their family and friends, and medical professionals to each other to increase their team performance, address their internal motivation and create a win-win situation.