THE context
Our client, a leader in the healthcare and research industries, wanted to prioritize a future where they were able to better identify, guide, and serve Serious & Complex patients. This subset of patients are those suffering from chronic conditions, severe injuries, or other complications that make navigating the path to well difficult or demoralizing.
In order to secure and grow the flow of Serious & Complex patients, our client needed a focused evaluation of new opportunities across the evolving digital healthcare landscape.
the CHALLENGe
Identify how to leverage digital experiences to secure the flow of serious and complex patients.
THE CLIENT
Confidential - All confidential client data has been changed or removed.
SKILLS BILLED
Learning Design
Co-Creation & Graphic Facilitation
Consumer Insights
Design Strategy
Visual Design
Health is a uniquely humbling human experience. There are few things more personal than the awareness of living in one’s own body. A health scare introduces an uncomfortable contrast: the stakes couldn’t be higher, but our amount of control couldn’t feel lower.
We would need to understand the perspectives of patients with a variety of healthcare needs to learn how to serve them best. Our team designed research activities ranging from online surveys to full day co-creation sessions with our community members. The big question: How might we design future health experiences to ensure every patient - especially those who need highly specialized care - gets the right care, at the right time?
Our learning design encouraged participants to imagine a future where the patient experience was radically different from the present day. We designed and sent our community members a digital and physical workbook to keep them engaged in activities during the co-creation session.
We hosted the co-creation sessions using Mural, with participants who were deeply familiar with navigating the healthcare system. Their perspectives on dealing with chronic illnesses, serious injuries, or other health complications were invaluable.
Participants were split into teams, with the end goal of brainstorming a Big Idea that would secure the flow of serious + complex patients in the year 2050. Participants' ideas were captured on sticky notes as well as sketched live by two illustrators (myself included).
We learned that two fundamental needs underpin the pursuit of well, especially for serious and complex patients.
The human experience of health creates a fundamental need for dignity: simply being recognized as an individual becomes a humanizing occurrence. It restores a sense of dignity that feels challenged by being in such a vulnerable position. The consumer experience of healthcare creates a fundamental need for confidence. Confidence in their providers and treatment plan restores a measure of consumers’ power. It provides comfort and peace of mind that they are on the path to well.
Further, patients have five experiential needs that drive decision-making along their healthcare journey. Ranging from emotionally based (human experience) to functionally based (consumer experience), these needs are: Humanity, Trust, Agency, Clarity, and Continuity.
Fundamental needs and experiential needs are not standalone, but interdependent and interconnected.
Patient needs come into play across six distinct decision points in the care journey.
We mapped these key moments to the experiential needs in order to understand how our client should respond to patients along the path to well.
THE RESULTS
We built our clients a toolkit around these key decisions along the journey as opportunities to deliver on healthcare consumer needs.
These opportunities are defined by a series of Levers and Drivers. Levers represent the areas of investment that influence the way consumers seek and access care. Drivers are the key opportunities within a lever that can be used to generate ideas for securing the flow of serious and complex patients.
Within each lever, we built an in-depth assessment of the qualitative and quantitative data that informed that lever's drivers. This toolkit is intended to be used on an ongoing basis to evaluate strategic choices, define actionable moves, and optimize investment decisions for our client.
EXTRA CREDITS
C Space Team: Aidan Borer, Tiff Branum, Megan Meany, Jane Ottensmeyer, Asa Pereli Silberstien
Co-Creation Illustrations: Carly Hagins
