A total of 2277 records were retrieved. After identifying and deleting 1340 duplicates, 909 records remained for the review of titles, abstracts, and keywords. From screening the title and abstract, it was found that 769 articles were not related to the research topic. Afterward, 140 documents were selected for full-text review. Of these, 23 articles were excluded due to lack of access to the full text, and 117 full-text documents and 26 items of snowball searching were reviewed for the final study. A total of 93 articles were excluded due to their content that was not related to research topic. Finally, relevant data were extracted from 50 documents (Additional file 4). The process of selecting documents is shown in Fig. 1. The extracted themes for social innovation in the prevention and control of epidemic diseases are reported in the following (Fig. 2 and Table 1).

The selection process of the articles

Social innovation themes extracted for the prevention and control of infectious diseases based on literature published in 2010–2022

The first theme of social innovation in the field of health is related to new products, which is divided into the following three sub-themes: technological products for control and management of epidemics, preventive products, diagnostic and therapeutic products. Technological products that have been used for control and management of epidemics include digital health tools for emergencies, touchless healthcare [13], innovative medical and protective equipment for dealing with COVID-19 [14, 15], new medical facilities [16], digital or remote service [17]. Digital health technologies were widely used during the COVID-19 crisis, including telecommunication technologies, mobile health apps, wearables, and online health services. Digital health is provided through virtual health care, telehealth, television interactions between health care providers and citizens, and access to online health information through mobile health apps [18]. Digital tools such as Internet of Things (IOT), biosensors, and artificial intelligence were also utilized to meet the dual goals of social distancing and healthcare in a "touchless" emergency situation [13]. Patient monitoring dashboard [19], ultraviolet light disinfection [10], mobile health programs [18], remote primary clinical care [20], remote case identification, personal protective equipment [21], and new product design in the fields of disinfection and prevention [3, 10, 15], mechanical hand washing systems [22] have all been used to manage health care during infectious disease outbreaks.

Diagnostic and therapeutic products include rapid and decentralized diagnostic tests [20, 23], mobile laboratories [23], respiratory devices for intensive care units [14], web-based triage tools [19, 24], pharmaceutical innovations in health [25], and virtual health care [18]. This innovation has been used through new and emerging technologies from simple software systems to robots and artificial intelligence, which are mostly used for diagnosis of COVID-19 as well as for logistics, transportation or auto-cleaning facilities [14, 26]. In addition, point-of-care decentralized test model [20], the Innovation Accelerator for diagnosis of COVID-19 [4], telemedicine digital platform for remote monitoring of long-term patient care [19] are innovations used for equipment in hospitals such as new types of ventilators for intensive care units that have been developed by various companies or startups [14].

New processes and policies based on social innovations have been discussed in various studies, including the reorganization of care methods to set up video interactions between patients and health workers [18], virtual care services [16], intermediary and digital services [16], the creation of medical corps [27], novel organizational forms [22], health care delivery at home [19], the provision of care services by mobile units [19], digitization of services [5], hybrid communities (virtual and face-to-face) [28], process and product improvement [22, 29], home production of health products [30], and innovative health facilities [17, 31]. Health systems around the world have generally utilized three common procedures to quickly improve their structure: creation of novel treatment facilities, changes in users of public locations, and reconfiguration of current medical services to accommodate patients with COVID-19 [17].

Changes in emergency control and surveillance policies for monitoring infectious diseases address issues such as social distancing [3, 13, 16, 32,33,34,35], quarantine [28], tracking contacts and movement of people in the community [33, 36, 37], integrated command in epidemic control [29, 38], enforcement of control rules [22] and human–machine cooperation [15]. Manual control of contact tracking is impossible due to COVID-19 pandemic as well as high levels of transmission among asymptomatic persons. Use of a contact-tracking app that reminds people of their close contacts and immediately notifies them of positive cases is more effective in reducing the spread of an epidemic, especially when combined with social distancing.[33]

In addition, creative participatory policies have been developed in the context of epidemics in relation to a variety of topics, including democratization of innovative policies [13], interdisciplinary and innovation approaches [3], collective decision-making [13], creative strategies in the fight against epidemics [38], targeted national initiatives for control of epidemics [22], strategic protocols [19], forming temporary advisory groups for dealing with an epidemic [17], establishment of information and communications technology (ICT)-based cooperation [39], cross-sectoral cooperation and interdisciplinary measures [9], community participation in accordance with guidelines [8, 40], adjustment of economic and social conditions during an epidemic [3] and the formation of temporary COVID-19 consultative teams to guide government decisions [17].

The role of technology in controlling and managing epidemics is the last subtheme identified in this category, which involves video interactions between patients and health workers [18], consideration of tools to control and manage the mobility of community members [36], tracking apps for locations and contacts [37, 41], creation of social maps for participation [42], implementation of digital alert systems [43], as well as digital and contactless assistance for protection [44], digital infrastructure for the provision of services [34], digital interactions [16], and health innovation technology [4, 25]. Also, there are mobile apps that assess and record the vicinity between people via Bluetooth, QR code checkpoints, Global Positioning System, and other devices [41].

The purpose of health empowerment is to promote community development for changing living conditions and engagement activities [45]. Empowerment is a key element of social innovation in response to epidemics, which has been characterized by building social capital and sustaining connections for communities [45]. Empowering different groups of society for responding to COVID-19 and other pandemics can lead to effective control conditions [29]. This component of social innovation is designed in three subcategories. First, the empowerment of health workers can be examined by the following measures: reducing the limitations of crisis through technology [16], health systems resilience [17, 46], health education approaches in crisis [25], decentralization of tasks to local level [29] and key determinants of health system resilience including governance, as well as finance, intersectoral cooperation, community participation for the provision of health facilities, health workers, medical technologies, products and the institution of public health practices [