Designing Healthcare Innovation

By now you know that I have a distinct interest in healthcare innovation, so it should come as no surprise that an article about the recent Healthcare Experience Design Conference caught my eye. Kicking the day off with a battle cry from Dr. Jacob Reider, chief medical officer at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, he challenged the crowd, “to help this industry do better”. And by better, he is referring to development of user friendly processes for patients and providers alike.

Albeit, being a do-it-yourself techie hamstrung by programs on a regular basis, I was encouraged to hear that this conference stretched beyond the traditional confines of user-centered design to include workflows, patient engagement and population health. Having designed a website myself, I can appreciate the tips outlined for engaging individuals in the digital realm; however, what I found most intriguing was Nir Eyal’s discussion about how people choose to engage with habit-forming technology. According to Eyal, “the key to developing habit-forming technology is to understand end-users’ “internal triggers” – the emotional drives that motivate them – and develop technology that begins as “vitamin” and then “turns into a painkiller.”

Cassie McDaniel, of the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation at Toronto’s University Health Network also pointed out that examining research, usage patterns and prototyping are key elements for user-centered design. And similar to the role that technology has played in the modernization of healthcare service delivery, McDaniel suggests that user-centered design bears the potential to catalyze the healthcare innovation movement.

One company, breaking down barriers to patient engagement and collaboration, is currently employing user-centered design. Iora Health, an accountable care organization (ACO), maintains its own team of designers and developers that routinely visit member practices to work with clinicians and staff to rethink the relationships between people, processes, IT and health reform. As a result, physicians now project the EHR onto a screen for patients to view/query and provide access to OpenNotes, thereby allowing individuals to access and update their charts. With the onset of meaningful use stage 2 and the voices of the impatient growing louder, will this impetus be enough? While I suspect that they have merely scratched the surface, time will only tell how far these right brain thinkers push the needle for transformation.