Digital health
Good digital health design - whether it’s about designing an electronic health record, a safer clinical workflow in a hospital, or an exercise app that will live on a patient’s phone – does not start with a technology in search of a problem to solve.
It starts with a deep understanding of the health challenge, from the perspectives of many people and organisations involved - patients, carers, clinicians, pharmacists, practice managers, hospital administrators, government policy-makers, and program managers.
It starts with an appreciation how culture, workflow, technology, patient needs and the law come together to improve health and wellbeing, and where the potential areas of friction and breakdown are so that they can be designed down or designed out.
At ThinkPlace, we tackle digital health initiatives by:
- researching out to the end user – often patients or clinicians – observing and talking to them in their own environment, to understand the true nature of the context and the challenge
- bringing many perspectives together in a co-design process to reimagine how things should work, conduct experiments, and to design and prototype solutions
- testing what’s being imagined and designed early and iteratively, to ensure it will work as expected
The digital world is already transforming health and healthcare, and design thinking helps ensure that this transformation is aligned to the needs of the users, that it is ethical, safe and integrated into the broader health and social services ecosystem.
