Application of User Innovation – How Doctors Affect the Development of Modern Medical Equipment

User innovation, as its definition, refers to innovation by intermediate or consumer users rather than by suppliers, has an extremely wide range of applications in many fields. From the automobile industry to food processing, where there is innovation, we can almost find the existence of user innovation, it has become an indispensable step in the innovation phase of products and services. In this thesis, I will focus on the application of user innovation in the medical field. More precisely, I will discuss how doctors, the users of modern medical equipment, participate in the innovation phase of those various kinds of equipment and affect their development. Starting from the definition of user innovation and lead users, I will also give a quick overview of examples and scenarios where user innovation is applied in other fields. Then, from the second chapter of the thesis, I will discuss the application of user innovation in the modern medical equipment innovation phase in detail, including the medical equipment used for medical diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment, and the positive and negative effects on account of the involvement of doctors in innovative and developing activities. Besides, in the following chapter, I will also make a comparison of the degree of participation of innovation and effects between doctors and patients because both of them can be considered as users of that medical equipment. At the end of the thesis, there are the last two chapters which talk about the latest cutting-edge application of user innovation in the medical field and my point of view about this topic respectively.