My first prototype of participatory patient education was with my son B for his food allergies (check out http://ihavefoodallergies.tumblr.com/). It was an incredibly empowering experience for me as a caregiver, to have the ability to transmit critical health information to his teachers, and through the process B gained a lot of confidence and a deeper understanding of his disease.

I believe that participatory design in healthcare is the wave of the future, but most healthcare institutions provide patient education materials that are designed by clinicians, not patients. Why couldn’t we iterate on the prototype that B created for education and have our own expert patients share their wisdom and knowledge about diabetes? Surely their story and their voices are more compelling and memorable than a printed black and white sheet of words provided by the doctor.

Here is our first prototype created by “L”, a boy with type 1 diabetes from our clinic.

Bravo “L”! You did a fantastic job! You are a way better teacher than any of us healthcare providers.

Please send your ideas and suggestions about how to make this prototype of participatory medicine grow! #s4pm

I post about healthcare and design here on Medium (https://medium.com/@joyclee), you can more information about me here, and you can find me tweeting about #design, #hcsm, #mhealth, and #dataviz on Twitter: @joyclee. For blogpost updates, sign up here.