Innovating Through Human Connection: Co-Design 101

PCVS encompasses many different approaches and tools that get to the heart of what really matters to people. Throughout the rest of this month, we’ll be exploring some of them in further detail, as well as sharing the work of partners, collaborators, and thought leaders in the healthcare improvement space. 

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The healthcare world largely does not include its end-users or patients in the process of designing. We think this is a problem. 

Healthcare design should be based upon the reported needs of the people that it serves. So, by not asking patients and listening to what matters to them, we are missing opportunities to foster better care outcomes. 

We need to create ways to always be assessing and evaluating how we can grow and improve our practice to better meet the needs of the patients that we are serving.

Why We Listen

For many years, the feedback loop has moved far too sluggishly, and our societal expectations have quickly outpaced them. 

Patients now expect immediacy and responsive information. 

We cannot wait for weeks and months to get results, and even longer for change happen. 

By engaging patients and staff with the unique knowledge of personal or lived experience, they become active experts with direct, real-time influence on how the medical practice is performed. 

What's so powerful about listening is how swiftly it shows value, benefitting the patients, providers, and the larger healthcare systems. 

By transitioning to a more collectivistic leadership approach with tools like co-design, healthcare team performance and patient safety culture may both improve. 

What Co-Design Really Looks Like 

For us, co-design is an umbrella term we use to describe the various ways that we include patients and also the staff in this process. Our approach goes beyond just conducting a survey or simply sending a follow-up email asking about your visit. 

Those are the things that we traditionally think of as feedback tools but we think that there is much to be gained from changing that system up and replacing it with something much more human, personal, and empathetic. 

If we put patient priorities at the very forefront of health care design and weave them into our programs, we have the chance to create an ongoing conversation, continuously asking, listening, and evaluating how well we are meeting this goal, and responding accordingly. 

Keeping the Conversation Alive 

In human-centered design, you approach the creation of new care delivery methods by not only keeping end-users in mind but actually soliciting their valuable feedback and opinions in the design stages and engaging them in the creation process. 

Through co-design, we are returning to some very basic concepts of human conversation and human connection so that we may go forward, innovating together.  

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One such way we seek to keep the conversation going is through our online community, Arthritis Together. We encourage you to join us, share your story and connect with others affected by osteoarthritis.