Enhancing Innovation in Health CareThe Value of Deeper Problem Analysis

If you would like to find out more about how Adaptive Lab can help you innovate in health care then email hey@adaptivelab.com.

Designing for Patients with Complex Needs

Who are “Patients with complex needs”?

People with multiple chronic (or long-term) conditions, often compounded with psychosocial challenges.

Why is this so important?

Patients Spend0

25

50

75

100

125 In Ontario, Canada, the top 5% of “high-users”, account for 66% of health care spending.

high users everyone else

Applying established approaches to health care challenges

Reward card game

Designing for the remembering self

Assessing cognitive load

Reward card game

Problem

People are bad at connecting short term behaviour to long term gains.

Trigger

Action

The Habit Loop

Reward

Nir Eyal’s Reward Types

HUNT

money

stuff

knowledge

TRIBE

acceptance

inclusion

attractiveness

importance

mastery

consistency

completion

SELF

Idea

Look for ways to provide patients with short term rewards to encourage the formation of long term habits which improve health care outcomes.

Designing for the remembering self

Problem

Health care can have unavoidable negative experiences such as pain, discomfort, embarrassment and confusion.

For these types of experience, what can be done to improve the patients overall wellbeing?

Experiencing self Remembering self

Emotional impact Tie to positive emotion Reduce emotions

Attention Ensure full attention Add distractions

Repetition Repeat activity or reminder Reduce reminders

Increase positive memories

Reduce negative memories

Idea

Design methods to minimise the memory of negative experiences and maximise the memory of positive experiences, thereby increasing the likelihood of the patient remaining engaged with the health care service.

Assessing cognitive load

Problem

Seeking and receiving health care and self care requires patients to learn and integrate new ideas and activities into their lives.

Patients are often introduced to these ideas and activities at non-optimal moments, decreasingly the likelihood of them being receptive to learning.

intrinsic

extraneous

lots of optionscomplexitynovelty

high emotional excitementmental fatigueenvironmental distractions

Available cognitive resource

multi-tasking

Idea

Introduce patients to new healthcare ideas and activities during moments of low cognitive load, when the are most receptive to new information.

In conclusion…

What did we discover and what’s next?

The use of concepts from behavioural psychology to develop exercises to explore health care design problems has shown great promise.

The success of applying these approaches to to design real world solutions will depend on identifying:

• Appropriate design problem

• Relevant user population

We only looked at a few concepts - there are many more to explore…

Leigh Hayden, PhdMedical Anthropologist,Women’s College Research InstituteToronto, CA

Kat MatfieldService Designer,Adaptive Lab,London, UK

Enhancing Innovation in Health CareThe Value of Deeper Problem Analysis

If you would like to find out more about how Adaptive Lab can help you innovate in health care then email hey@adaptivelab.com.