Healthcare Innovation by Design

Ask any one who works in healthcare, uses healthcare or knows someone who does.

Most of the time, you will hear that healthcare experiences (for care providers AND consumers) are

Complex

Stressful

Difficult

Error-prone

User-unfriendly

Instead of being

Simple

Healing

Intuitive

Safe

User-friendly

CARE DELIVERY IS IN NEED OF DESIGN

Three factors are increasing the urgency of this need

Demographics

Scientific discovery on turbo charge (learn why)

Unsustainable financial model

I’ve been looking very hard for a long time and I can’t find a program for training CARE DESIGNERS.

I googled (the gateway to omniscience) “Care Designer”.  Google suggested “Car Design” and provided links to healthcare architectural design, hair care design, lawn care design but nothing on HEALTH CARE DESIGN.

I don’t mean to imply that there are no Care Designers.  In earlier blog posts, I’ve written about great work that is being done.  In Europe, Australia and in the United States.  Given the scope of the work to be done, however, we’re not moving fast enough.

We need to MASS PRODUCE Care Designers.  We need a lot of them.  We need them in hospitals, clinics, EHR companies, medical device manufacturers, pharmaceuticals, managed care, healthcare research centers,…

Some pioneering programs are starting to emerge.  I recently talked to Linda Mottle with the Center of Healthcare Innovation and Clinical Trials at Arizona State University.  They’re doing GREAT WORK! Peter Jones is also writing a very good book on the subject.

Many questions remain to be answered, however.  What is the right knowledge base and skill set that Care Designers need?  How do we create the motivation for academic institutions to implement those programs and for healthcare organizations to hire their graduates?  And many other questions.

We need to start working on answering these questions. 

The Mayo Center of Innovation is a leading model of the application of design thinking to care delivery innovation.  Two articles have recently been published about the SPARC program (the predecessor of the Center). 

In the first article is written by Ryan Armbruster (who served as the Director of SPARC at inception) et al., and provides a overview of origins and philosophy behind the program; the design thinking methodology as it was applied to care delivery; and lessons learned including the importance of organizational support and positioning, and program resources.

In the second article, Michael Brennan et al., provides a clinician’s perspective on SPARC, its sturcture and function, how it fits with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) 10 Rules of Redesign of Care, and a couple of examples of SPARC projects.

Finally, here is Fast Company’s take (and the source of the picture above) on SPARC.  Sam