Abstract
Healthcare systems are becoming increasingly conscious of the quality of care delivered, along with the provision of value-driven services. Nevertheless, the majority of innovation in the realm of healthcare has been focused on products and services. Beyond being the major contributor to healthcare expenditure, these technology-driven innovations treat medical staff as the primary stakeholder and do little in the way of improving the quality of care for patients. This presents an opportunity to explore other forms of innovation in the context of healthcare. As a human-centred approach, design offers a method for holistically exploring problems, meeting stakeholder needs, and has been established as a means of driving innovation. This paper suggests that a design-led approach to innovation could increase quality of care and assist in creating value-driven services. To conclude, the paper contributes a framework, along with a set of examples, detailing four design objectives in the context of health and medicine.
Keywords
innovation; design-driven; medical design; health and medicine
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.318
Citation
Nusem, E. (2018) Design in Healthcare: challenges and opportunities, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.318
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Design in Healthcare: challenges and opportunities
Healthcare systems are becoming increasingly conscious of the quality of care delivered, along with the provision of value-driven services. Nevertheless, the majority of innovation in the realm of healthcare has been focused on products and services. Beyond being the major contributor to healthcare expenditure, these technology-driven innovations treat medical staff as the primary stakeholder and do little in the way of improving the quality of care for patients. This presents an opportunity to explore other forms of innovation in the context of healthcare. As a human-centred approach, design offers a method for holistically exploring problems, meeting stakeholder needs, and has been established as a means of driving innovation. This paper suggests that a design-led approach to innovation could increase quality of care and assist in creating value-driven services. To conclude, the paper contributes a framework, along with a set of examples, detailing four design objectives in the context of health and medicine.