Emachi Enaji posted a thoughtful forum piece that I missed back in December (I'm probably used to seeing these in the Blog section above). I wanted to draw attention to his inquiry and two questions that get to the heart of design for care services. One thing Emachi said - in the middle - I'd like to focus on:

" ... finding a means from the design perspective…

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation is hearing brief proposals in the form of Innovation Challenges for system-level healthcare innovation.Letters of Intent are due in less than 2 weeks (Dec 19th), and proposals in January.  They are interested in hearing from a wide range of organizations and partnerships with proposals for system-wide service redesign.

This is an area I'm interested in developing, whether from the US as a small consultancy (Dialogic Design) or…

What happens when an Electronic Medical/Health Records system (EHR) is first installed in a large clinic or hospital? We must always expect the emergence of unintended outcomes, the consequences of enterprise level automation of deeply-routinized social and technical tasks. These unintended outcomes may include:

• Unfavorable workflow changes 
• Never-ending demands for system changes
• Conflicts between electronic and paper-based systems
• Generation of new…

Community member Dean Karavite posted a book review on the CHOP Bioinformatics blog Informatics 360 on the new book The History of Medical Libraries. You will want to read this book after reading Dean. He goes on and reveals some of his observations and insights into EMR and HIT application design.

Many people think that paper medical charts are hopelessly archaic. The sooner they are all scanned and shredded the better…

Procreating Ourselves to Death  (t.m.)

Ban the Population Bomb

ZPG.AdBan.org

Media Monopolies, Drug Cartels, Artificial Ignorance and the Demographic J.

-- by George Kasey

founding member of the PeaceMaker Virtual Free University (t.m.)(inc.) and The Foundation…

1. Fred Trotter's O'Rellly Book: Getting to Meaningful Use and Beyond

You can preview and comment on this book as its in process. What a great idea!…

Because the only way to really make information disappear, these days, is to surround it by a sufficient…

Dr. Sam Basta's Healthcare Innovation by Design community resource and the LinkedIn group have grown into a series of webinar presentations and premium resources. While the webinars are part of a premium subscriber model, the topics and discussions on LinkedIn are worth following.

Sam has curated a remarkable…

The following conceptual model introduced through a website and established blog "Welcome to the QUAD" may be of interest to this health care - design community:



http://hodges-model.blogspot.com/



Originally created in the UK by Brian E Hodges (Ret.) at Manchester Metropolitan University - Hodges' Health Career - Care Domains - Model [h2cm]



http://www.p-jones.demon.co.uk/



- can help map health, social care and…

Today's posts are a banquet of relevance:

Why cookbook medicine detracts from compassionate care…

Wow!  What an incredible event MadPow’s Healthcare Experience Design Conference in Boston turned out to be.  I was there to present on the concept of Personal Healthcare Strategists.  To VizThink…

The first Healthcare Experience Design conference, a one-day symposium held in Boston April 11, sold out with nearly 300 participants across all sectors and industries.  The program selected leading speakers and designers in four tracks of presentations:

• Patient-Centric Design
• Designing for Care: Provider Interfaces and Care Environments
• Facilitating Engagement
• New…

My friend Jeff Mather recently posted on this issue. In his blog post, he pointed out a great TEDMED presentation by Thomas Goetz of Wired magazine. You can watch this presentation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P2M3nGEuIQ.

I have…

Over the past few months, the topic of Patient Experience has come up more and more in my client meetings. Everyone seems to know that there are huge issues when it comes to providing people with a great healthcare experience, but no one seems to be able to put their finger on exactly what the problem is.  

All the players in the experience are taking their lumps. Pharmaceutical companies are accused of inserting themselves into a process in which they don’t belong…

Architecture, interior design and clinical devices have adopted evidence-based design (EBD) and these fields actively contribute to its development through major projects, journal articles, and conferences. Evidence based design is a rigorous design equivalent to the careful application of scholarly evidence in informing care decisions. It is a healthcare term of art and has meaning in that sector.  It is not…

How far do we really expect the web to take us? Health is not an information problem, certainly not solely, but a personal and social agreement acted on by commitments to future health. A systemic health revolution is not a function of better web applications, but of policy and practice changes. Information follows, it does not lead, these changes. Take a close look at the mess of large-scale electronic health records (EHR) systems if you need a reminder that information does not…