Insights and strategies to facilitate healthcare innovation
An essential read for designers in healthcare, Health Design Thinking, outlines strategies and methods for applying human centered design principles to solve healthcare challenges. Through vivid images, diagrams, and resources, the authors present a wide range of case studies that inspire designers to imagine how they can impact healthcare through design.
The book is authored by Bon Ku, a physician and founder of the innovative Health Design Lab at Thomas Jefferson University, and Ellen Lupton, a designer, author, and curator at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. They draw on contributions from additional experts in design and medicine throughout the book to support their insights.
The book aims to encourage collaboration among healthcare professionals, patients, researchers, and designers to answer the fundamental question: “How might we achieve better health through improved services, products, interactions, and education?”
The authors make the case that by applying design thinking methodologies to healthcare challenges, one is able to create products that are more humane, efficient, and equitable. At its core, design thinking practices apply experimentation and collaboration to reframe problems and approach solutions differently. While objectively medical and healthcare industries are not creative fields, they face a vast array of challenges that could benefit from design teams innovating on behalf of patients and physicians.
Principles
The book intros by grounding readers with an understanding of fundamental human centered and creative design principles. Readers learn how empathy, codesign, and social determinants play a role in human centered health design. Creative concepts including questioning, visualizing, prototyping, and storytelling are discussed to prepare readers to open their creative mindset.
This book stands out because it is structured through an effort to illustrate how concepts are applied in real life design work. Each concept presented is vividly explained and supported with a real example of a time when a team applied the concept to a healthcare challenge.
For example, when discussing how to introduce empathy into the design process, instead of simply explaining the importance of empathy, the authors highlight a time when a team applied empathy while designing a portable device to perform pelvic exams in the ED. They discuss the experience of a male team member role playing as a patient receiving a pelvic exam to understand the uncomfortable and embarrassing experience, in order to better relate to the patient he was designing for. This book continually supports concepts with tangible examples of work being conducted by student design teams, healthcare professionals, and organizations.
Methods
I found the methods section of the book to serve as a practical toolkit for those interested in applying design thinking to their work. Methods include brainstorming, interviews, photo journals, personas, role-playing, storyboards, journey maps, project boards, data visualization, occupancy surveys, and spatial data mapping. These chapters included guides and resources for executing these methods, as well as vivid examples of teams applying the methodologies.
Case Studies Once aware of guiding principles and methods, readers are prepared to explore how those tactics have been applied to a variety of real world healthcare challenges. The cases discussed cover a vast breadth of issues aimed to engage people of all aspects of health design. Cases touch an array of spaces, including the design of:
Medical devices
Hospital garments
Diagnostics
Digital Therapeutics
Clinical Trial Processes
Youth Health Education
Exam Rooms
Hospital Floor Plans
Upon completion of the case studies, I felt inspired to think about designing solutions for challenges facing the patient experience and inclusive design.
Key Takeaways
There is immense opportunity to improve care delivery and medical product design to facilitate improved health outcomes and patient experiences.
While implementing solutions may require sufficient resources, applying design thinking to generate innovative ideas is fairly cheap and easy to do when prepared with the right team and mindset.
Healthcare innovation requires collaboration between patients, physicians, designers, and researchers in order to create a solution that meets the needs of the end user.
The key to addressing clinical needs and solving healthcare challenges with an innovative approach is by introducing creativity and collaboration. I would recommend this book to students in the field of medicine, engineering, health, and design. Additionally, this book is a great resource for medical industry leaders and healthcare management systems interested in fostering an environment of innovation.
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