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Design Thinking In Healthcare: One Step At A Time By Dr.Mahboob ali khan Phd

In the past, design has most often occurred fairly far downstream in the

development process and has focused on making new products aesthetically

attractive or enhancing brand perception through smart, evocative advertising.

Today, as innovation’s terrain expands to encompass human-centered processes

and services as well as products, companies are asking designers to create ideas

rather than to simply dress them up.

A method of meeting people’s needs and desires in a technologically feasible

and strategically viable way. In this article he offers several intriguing examples

of the discipline at work. Reengineer nursing-staff shift changes at hospitals.

Close observation of actual shift changes, combined with brainstorming and

rapid prototyping, produced new procedures and software that radically

streamlined information exchange between shifts. The result was more time for

nursing, better-informed patient care, and a happier nursing staff.

Another involves the Japanese bicycle components manufacturer Shimano,

which worked with IDEO to learn why 90% of American adults don’t ride

bikes. The interdisciplinary project team discovered that intimidating retail

experiences, the complexity and cost of sophisticated bikes, and the danger of

cycling on heavily trafficked roads had overshadowed people’s happy memories

of childhood biking. So the team created a brand concept—―Coasting‖—to

describe a whole new category of biking and developed new in-store retailing

strategies, a public relations campaign to identify safe places to cycle, and a

reference design to inspire designers at the companies that went on to

manufacture Coasting bikes.

More and more individuals and families will enter the indian healthcare system

in coming years, and it seems obvious that this in and of itself is a good

thing. But as this trend continues, total healthcare expenditures will likely rise

as well, which is not such a good thing. So, there is a rather clear and

important question to be answered: How do we provide more and higher

quality healthcare, to more and more people, while simultaneously lowering the

cost of delivering that care? Is that even a possibility?

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As with most big challenges, the answer is more likely to be found in little steps

and little changes, rather than grand strategies and grand ideas. The use of

innovative design thinking and strategies can be a big contributor to creating

more efficient healthcare delivery, continuous improvement in quality, and

lower total cost. Here’s a story that can illustrate how design principles applied

to planning can lead to higher quality and lower cost health care.

I recently talked with a team of healthcare providers and a team of design

thinking consultants who joined together to solve some interesting health care

delivery challenges. a leading community health center faced the challenge of

opening a new children’s clinic serving low-income families, many on and

many uninsured. A typical clinic patient would be struggling to balance work,

family and school responsibilities, as well as financial, transportation and

language barriers. As clinic leaders began the planning process, they made a

commitment to addressing patient issues in advance, and to staying mindful of

the need to control cost without compromising quality.

The answer was to adopt a design-thinking approach to building out the clinic

and the patient experience. They convened an energetic and committed team of

design leaders, clinic administrators, medical staff and others and set about

totally redesigning the patient experience, the clinical space, workflow and

operations.

The premise of the combined teams was simple: Improve quality and lower

cost. But it was the inherent contradiction in this premise that was the

challenge. Oftentimes, quality, profitability and sustainability operate at odds

with each other. But some Clinic’s team wanted to address both objectives –

fostering good health and profitable, sustainable operations. This is why the use

of design thinking was critical to their success. First, it helped to address

inefficiencies and perennial organizational crises that interfere with healing and

disrupt the patient experience. And second, it helped the team discover and

apply paradigm-shifting innovations in how they thought of the entire health

journey, from pediatrics to geriatrics.

As a starting point, the design team developed an action plan involving site

visits, observations and interviews. This helped the clinical, operations and

administrative teams see how working smarter could lead to a happier and more

productive staff, and better care for kids. They then went into design action

mode and began addressing the challenge of higher quality care, patient

experience and cost control.

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I think -Design thinking provides a great framework, a great way of thinking,

and can considerably improve health care experience and outcomes.‖ As with

others on the team, I discovered the power of design thinking to help the clinic

leadership address a number of challenges in new, and likely more effective,

ways, from the most mundane to the breakthrough.

For example, the teams asked this simple series of questions: Should there be a

check-in desk taking up most of the lobby? Should thirty waiting patients be

funneled through six reception windows to receive care in the twenty two

available exam rooms? Must the patients be left idle while they wait for care?

Or is there a better way to use the clinic space and the patients’ time? The

answers were: ―No. No. No. Yes!‖

This perspective on the patient experience led the teams to understand the

reception area as an inherent problem of efficiency. They learned how pit crews

at auto races rehearse to shave fractions of a second off their driver’s wait and

then asked themselves: Could the receptionists at Clinic choreograph their

work like that? Then, in a typical design thinking turn, the team had another

insight: maybe reception itself should be mobile. What if someone with an iPad

or other tablet walked up and welcomed each patient individually?

Whether it’s a pit crew or a clinic reception area, design thinking can make it

better.

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As the team grappled with these workflow and experience challenges .The

healthcare providers and operations staff then could actually move about in,

interact with and role play in the space — as they designed it. This real-world

engagement with the space led the team to a final version that they liked even

better than the initial plan.

The interplay of design thinking with the experience and skills of healthcare

professionals led Clinic to what they hope will be new levels of efficiency and

improved patient experience. What the clinic team learned in this process is as

much about the future as it is about the present. I see this as a paradigm shift in

how healthcare professionals can think about healthcare delivery.

By learning design thinking, those on the front lines of hospitals, clinics, and

related service organizations gain the ―creative confidence‖ to make change

happen. This confidence boost requires a change in mindset from leadership as

well, so staff is both supported and encouraged to apply their knowledge to

improving the lives of everyone who interacts with healthcare professionals –

that is, with everyone.