Interested in how design improves life? Check out these three articles to get a handle on how human-centered design could rock healthcare.
1. “Designing Social Networks for Young Behavorial Healthcare Patients”
I love this. At Healthcare Design Magazine, how inviting, home-like interiors and shared creative spaces meet teens’ developmental needs at substance-abuse facilities.
Market Trends to Watch for Health Systems and Their Specialty Pharmacies
The future looks bright for the integrated specialty pharmacy model – for health systems, providers, and most importantly, for patients.
2. “Healthcare Is Broken. And This Designer Thinks She Can Fix It”
Want to know the basics of why design and healthcare are in the same sentence in the first place? Read this profile of IDEO Active Health Lead Gretchen Wustrack at Wired.
Wustrack on how she realized the two go hand-in-hand:
I had emergency back surgery. I’d gone from a very active, healthy, health-conscious person to all of a sudden in the hospital, [as a] patient with no understanding. I was not empowered. All of a sudden you’re just totally vulnerable no matter how educated you are. It was such a scary, uncertain time. In a lot of ways you just lose your dignity because you’re not in control. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to recover. There was a chance I wouldn’t. That was scary. Living and working through that experience as a designer made me commit to that space all the more because there’s just so much need for helping patients and physicians.
The Funding Model for Cancer Innovation is Broken — We Can Fix It
Closing cancer health equity gaps require medical breakthroughs made possible by new funding approaches.
3. “The AIA Announces National Healthcare Design Awards Winners”
Okay. This is not so much an article as it is a very specific type of design porn: great hospital architecture. This slideshow features 12 hospitals that are functional, good-looking and either sustainable, socially responsible or integrated into urban environments.
4. “Medical Device Manufacturers, Be Prepared to Innovate”
Whether its eating utensils made for patients with arthritis or health monitoring devices turned video games, the medtech industry also is becoming more design-centered. Bio-connectivity is one more big reason the industry needs to pay attention to human-centered design.
Favorite quote from this article:
World class innovators look out at the future and see a trend, not a threat. They see an opportunity.
~Jim Carroll, futurist
5. “6 Challenges (and Opportunities) for Healthcare Design”
Hint: “Better, faster, cheaper” is a major theme.