Design thinking is gaining it’s rightful prominence in the Healthcare as a valuable approach to solve range of healthcare issues and redesign care delivery. However, application of Design thinking principles are still not mainstream. NEJM surveyed 625 of their council experts from executives, clinical leaders to clinicians and come-up with their finding on the state of Design thinking in the healthcare.
Here is the catching observation from the report:
- Majority of the respondent (39% ) said they only “Occasionally” employ principles/techniques of design thinking while only 20% said they do it “mostly”. With 21% said “seldom”. Clearly Design thinking still has not won hearts and minds of decision makers. Point 6 informs why.
- Top five issues that would benefit to the “larger healthcare industry” from Design thinking are: 1- Care Co-ordination; 2- Integration and funding of SDoH; 3- Technology use, integration & improvement ; 4- Payment reform; 5- Patient Engagement .
- Top five issues that would benefit most to their “respected organization” from the design thinking approaches: 1- Staff and provider flow & Collaboration; 2- Scheduling patient appointment and reducing no-shows; 3- Patient adherence/ compliance with Therapy 4- Patient Satisfaction score ; 5- Patient flow during office visits & procedures
- There is a greater consensus among NEJM council members that Design Thinking is useful in “Healthcare Industry“ with 44% saying it is extremely useful while 36% saying it is extremely useful for “their organization”.
- Clinical Leaders ( 45%), Executives (37%), and Clinicians(33%) are the most appropriate champions of Design Thinking.
- This is important- Top four barriers to Applying Design thinking in the Healthcare identified as: 1- Limited buy-in from Stakeholders; 2- Limited understating of Design; 3- Insufficient training in Design and 4- Uncertainty about ROI. In my opinion, more awareness on ‘2’ and ‘4’ can quickly change ‘1’.
As Healthcare moves towards consumerization and patient centricity, Design thinking can considerably improve health care experience and outcomes. Digital Health assets/solutions built using Design thinking approach ( Design 1st, Technology 2nd) provide better experience and have far greater rate of adoption, adherence that result in effective engagement. Is Design thinking part of your strategy..?
The article was first published on the Author’s Linkedin Pulse Blogs, its republished here with the Author’s permission.
Author
Vishnu Saxena
Vishnu is an Industry connected transformational healthcare Leader with an impressive reputation for building high growth, high value healthcare business practices, turning around digital health startups and advising accelerators, innovators. Proven track record in partnering with healthcare stakeholders (Providers, payers, pharmaceuticals), ISV’s, med devices companies and helping them succeed across digital medicine innovation, patient/member engagement strategy, redefining patient experience thru design thinking, value based care transformation, technology consulting, Digital integration and Data-Analytics goals
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