Design Can Fix Healthcare: Will You Let It?
Note: This post was co-authored with Katie Donohue McMillan.
We are going to go out on a limb and say it. The mHealth market is saturated. This became apparent at the recent HIMSS Connected Health Summit, held in Washington D.C. Attendees came from government, telecom companies, start ups, hospitals, design agencies, maker spaces, and EHR companies. With a crowd like that, you’d think there would be some diversity of thought. Some big, ground breaking ideas. The next best thing.
What we found was people speaking the right language about what needed to be done with very few explaining how.
The biggest buzz phrase of the event was not “Internet of Things” or “Personalized Healthcare” (though they were close seconds and thirds) but the current that ran through the event and was even shouted from the main stage was USER EXPERIENCE!
Can we all take a minute to appreciate the fact that Healthcare, an industry that has typically valued function over form, has recognized that patients are consumers, and they want their products to not only work, but also be simple, compelling, and beautiful!
*Slow clap*
We are biased. 40+ hours of our weeks’ are spent thinking about how the products we work to design and build can be even better than the last product we put our blood, sweat and tears into. We could have stood on that stage in front of 1,000 people three years ago and told them that design was the future of patient engagement and mobile health.
Finally, healthcare has caught up.
Unfortunately, it has caught up in concept, but not in practice. There are some good examples, but in real life, many of these companies are watering down the idea of design with the same tired implementation strategies that have hemorrhaged time and money for years. We attended a breakout session about collaborative population health management, expecting to see how it was being done out in the wild. What we got were endless taxonomies, wordy powerpoint slides and 11 steps to better data governance. Yes, data governance is important, but the presentation (and many others) exposed something troubling: people are trumpeting the power of design without any understanding of how to execute it. Design is at risk of being the new “innovation”: a term that once meant something and has become trite.
“Design is the key to making the system work for patients,” we heard in one ballroom, while through a partition a speaker said that our ideas should not change clinician workflow if we want them to be adopted. Design is a process, not a deliverable. When it is done properly, it should take the existing workflow and needs of the physician into account in service of making systemic improvement. For patients it should empower them to take control of their own health, both on a day-to-day basis and make navigating the greater system simpler.
Healthcare wants design, but it wants it in handcuffs. That’s because design as a concept is foreign to many in the space. As designers, we’re taught to fail fast. In healthcare, they’ve learned that if they fail, lives may be lost. As designers, we have to be respectful of these attitudes. The stakes are much higher in healthcare than they are when designing a consumer application, but that doesn’t fundamentally change the pursuit of design and the need for it to be done well.
So what does this really mean, in real life? If you want to get involved with design take the practice seriously and make a commitment. Information is the backbone of all good design work; take the time and allocate the funds to do research. That doesn’t just mean a focus group or a survey — it might require boots on the ground in facilities working directly with patients, providers and staff. Accept that things might move faster than you are accustomed. The goal is to quickly get to the point where you can test efficient and iterate. If you’ve spent millions of dollars and you still have no idea if your user base is going to like what you’re building, you’re doing it wrong. Get comfortable with iterating and the fact that what you thought your solution was going to be at the beginning might end up entirely differently. Explore not only all potential solutions, but all possible problems. Realize that not every project will have a return, but that doesn’t mean you should stop trying to improve.
If you work in a traditional Healthcare setting, this requires that you either hire or work with people who have expertise in design thinking and user experience. It is a particular set of skills, not unlike any other required to make the big mess of complexity that is a healthcare operation run. If you’re going to hire someone, don’t hire traditional consultants and expect to get something different. If you’re interested in design, hire companies that know design like Smashing Boxes or Benjamin & Bond.
Interested in learning more about design in healthcare? Check out:
Prescribe Design: http://prescribedesign.com/
Katie Donohue McMillan and Justin Kunkel are contributors to the Prescribe Design community and advocates of the movement. You can find their musings on healthcare, design, and technology on Twitter: @KatieDMcMillan and @justkunk.
