Design thinking has become widespread in many industries, including the healthcare system, where it's become especially prevalent. In 2015, the University of Texas Dell School of Medicine collaborated with the UT College of Fine Arts to create the Design Institute for Health. The Design Institute for Health at the University of Texas at Austin utilizes design thinking to improve healthcare experiences for patients in the Austin area. Their work primarily focuses on service design in healthcare – developing methods to improve efficiency in healthcare processes, while ensuring the experience remains patient-centered.
Design thinking, in this case, healthcare design thinking, encourages the practitioner to place the user (patient) at the center of their solution. During this process, practitioners generally collaborate in interdisciplinary teams and perform “action-oriented rapid prototyping,” which involves several rounds of ideation, prototyping, and testing [1]. Action-oriented rapid prototyping is often included in the healthcare design thinking process to account for user insight through all steps of the design process. Dr. Altman describes the process of Design thinking in healthcare in the following steps:
Needfinding – During this step, practitioners are asked to identify their target audience, the issue that they are attempting to resolve, and to conduct research to understand the context behind the identified issue.
For example, if a group of design researchers was attempting to develop health interventions to assist at-risk, low-income populations with the goal of improving health outcomes, they would first need to identify their target population from a geographical standpoint. Where is this population located? What is the history of this region and what is the racial distribution in the population? Then they would identify the problem – what are the most common health conditions experienced? What are the causes of these conditions? Are they largely lifestyle-related or are they genetic? These questions enable design researchers to better understand their target audience and identify the range of problems they are attempting to develop solutions for.
The next stage is divided into three steps and is known as Action-Oriented Rapid Prototyping.
Ideation: The process of brainstorming potential solutions to the problem statements developed previously.
Prototyping: Developing representations of the ideated solutions. If it is a product that is being designed, researchers will likely develop a product prototype. For example, if the researchers ideated the creation of a community clinic, a three-dimensional rendering of the clinic within the proposed location will likely be presented.
Testing: This stage is crucial to furthering the design process. Users will evaluate the prototype and provide feedback about whether the prototype was effective. If there is a consensus that the prototype still requires more refining, the researchers will likely return to the ideation or prototyping stage.
The final stage of this process is Implementation. The successful implementation of the tested solution is crucial to enacting change in the healthcare system. Healthcare designers also need to consider the longevity of their product and whether it can be altered and improved due to changing environmental needs. The healthcare system and hospitals are constantly evolving; it is important for these implementations to change over time to best serve their target audience. While this process is analogous to various design thinking processes that are used in other fields, healthcare design is fundamentally rooted in service and designing solutions to diffuse positive health interventions for those who need it. For example, researchers who are attempting to design a community clinic may identify their target population as the underserved community members in the neighborhood and specific questions regarding individual and community social and health needs are posed to those very same community members to develop a clinic that best serves the target population.
There are also many methods to apply healthcare design thinking strategies to promote better health outcomes. This could be through the creation of apps to improve direct communication between patients and providers, streamlining information processing within hospitals, or the improvement of physical hospital spaces. Health is not limited to the physical body - it is also a cumulative effect of socioeconomic status, the physical location of the individual, mental wellness, and various other factors. Healthcare design thinking attempts to take all of these determinants of health and design solutions to mitigate their effects in order to improve health outcomes for vulnerable populations.
An example of this would be their renovation of the UT Health Austin Clinic to improve communication between medical providers and patients. A three-staged design-thinking process was utilized in the development of this project, and the result was a healthcare space that was calming, welcoming, and without the “clinical” feel, which can often lead to patients feeling anxious and deterred from visiting their physicians.
Images of the newly renovated concourse and waiting rooms of the UT Health Austin Clinic. The presence of more calming light sources and comfortable furniture allows patients to feel more at ease prior to their physician visits [2].
The American healthcare field is constantly and rapidly innovating – there are always new drug treatments, rehabilitation therapies, and cures being developed. But, along with this rapid innovation, there is a deeply flawed system that ignores the patients it was designed to serve. Healthcare design thinking and its principles have enabled practitioners to work towards solving systemic issues related to healthcare in small ways that can greatly impact patients’ lives.
Healthcare design thinking is now being implemented into medical school curriculums to foster a more patient-centered approach toward treatment. The interdisciplinary nature of design invites experts from varying fields to use their experience to develop novel solutions to problems within the national healthcare system. Although we still have a long way to go in regard to healthcare, healthcare design thinking gives patients the opportunity to advocate for their own needs. The uses of healthcare design thinking are infinite and even small qualitative improvements can produce a world of change for those who need it.
References:
[1]. Altman, Myra, et al. “Design Thinking in Health Care.” Preventing Chronic Disease, vol. 15, no. 117, Sept. 2018, https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.5888/pcd15.180128.
“Design Thinking for Health.” Design Thinking For Health, https://designthinkingforhealth.org/.
[2]. “Provoking New Behaviors: UT Health Austin Clinic Experience Design.” Design In Health, https://www.designinhealth.org/provoking-new-behaviors-ut-health-austin-clinic-experience-design.
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