Designing the Ideal Healthcare

Design is not only something that you do to play in school, but it is something that makes society better.

Radim Pekárek
Aug 26, 2017 · 2 min read

Nowadays, design becomes more than simply designing objects. Designing to promote behavioural chance is the progress which changes this discipline. Today, design is more about using systems-led thinking. As an example, design is used to understand client’s needs, desires or fears. Furthermore, design helps to effectively improve treatment spaces or patient communication. Design helps to improve and save lives — I consider design thinking as a fascinating example of progress in design in the last 100 years.

Redesigning of an ambulance in London is the best example, how design thinking in healthcare works in practice. At the beginning of this project, there was a question “how may looks an ambulance of the 21st century?” Designers from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design changed the concept of the treatment area, they made a vehicle cleaning and infection control much easier and improved the ambulance with advanced technology staff to monitor patient’s vital signs. Furthermore, its system quickly sends information about a patient inside to the receiving hospital. Paramedic Dixie Dean, who worked on the project, said: “The design team’s approach of involving clinical staff from the beginning has ensured the current design will improve the experience for patients and create a better treatment space”. Designing with people and not only for people was essential in this case.

This project is only one example of many of how design thinking may find solutions to improve health conditions. Design thinking is different to the culture of visual and formal design, it takes it to a border. This is more structural and strategic approach. There is an evidential shift between design which works for products for the market. This is a method which helps to facilitate an experience of a service. But, it will probably take time for people In leadership roles to realize that design is not only something that you do to play in school, but it is something that makes society better.

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Radim Pekárek

Written by

MA Service Design student, Royal College of Art • ex Prague College, Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Art and Design

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