How can you engage patients and stakeholders in co-designing healthcare solutions?

Engaging patients and stakeholders in co-designing healthcare solutions involves several steps. First, identify the key individuals who should be involved, such as patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals, and community representatives. Then, create a collaborative environment through workshops, focus groups, and online platforms to gather their insights and ideas. Actively listen to their needs, preferences, and challenges to inform the solution's design. Regular communication and updates are crucial to maintaining engagement throughout the process. Lastly, incorporate their feedback into the solution's development and implementation, ensuring that their perspectives are genuinely integrated.

Increased Empathy: Engaging patients and stakeholders fosters empathy and understanding, allowing solutions that truly resonate with the end-user. Enhanced Effectiveness: Solutions co-designed are more likely to meet the actual needs and wants of the users, ensuring effectiveness. Innovation and Change: By involving diverse perspectives, co-design sparks innovation and facilitates transformation.

Co-designing is especially crucial for startups looking to develop their brand and gain a competitive advantage because many medical practitioners are frustrated with the solutions out there, especially EHRs, and by working with various types and sizes of clinics, you can better understand the general flow, where the shortcomings are and innovate. This mindset has been my approach to healthcare innovation, as I initially got so many things wrong because I believed my way was the best, and I am glad I had this mindset shift early.

Ownership! When a team helps design something, they have a vested interest in helping it succeed. What I have learned in building and changing cultures is: we have to let the group think it's their idea. The ideal outcome is when they proudly announce: "this was designed by us, and our patients, for us and our patients.!"

It is important to involve the patients and other stakeholders of any health management system because unidirectional flow of information may lead to a systematic error with minimum chance of improvement.

Know Me: Understand the users' needs and desires. What do they really want from their healthcare experience? Value Me: Recognize the unique contributions that each stakeholder brings to the table. Make It Easy For Me: Design solutions that are accessible and user-friendly.

I will also add sharing ideas from your potential clients amongst each other instead of keeping them siloed to yourself. I say this because the perspectives of others can evolve and create new ideas with more information.

'Getting out of your head' is also essential as professionals sometimes believe we know what is best without 'truly' analyzing what other professionals are saying. This type of tunnel vision can impact the co-designing process because: 1. You need to absorb what is being said effectively to compare it to your thoughts which can bring about fresh thoughts. 2. This closed-off mindset can negatively impact others' willingness to work with you and unlock their creative minds.

Co-design is an approach to engaging stakeholders in health & social system change. It focuses on the experiences of patients & staff. Key principles for engaging patients & stakeholders in co-designing healthcare solutions: 1. Show empathy for patients' needs, challenges & emotions 2. Include representative & diverse group in the process 3. Co-create solutions with those involved 4. Iterate solutions with feedback & evidence 5. Learn the issues that matter to stakeholders 6. Support key audiences in understanding work 7. Build positive relationships Other principles include: 1. Postponing design decisions until after gathering feedback 2. Synthesising feedback from target users into insights 3. Developing solutions based on feedback

orkshops & Focus Groups: These provide platforms for honest and transparent discussions. Prototyping & Testing: Involve users in creating and testing solutions. This embodies the concept of "show, don’t tell." Surveys & Interviews: These tools help to understand the personal experiences and needs of the users.

Involving patients and stakeholders in collaborative healthcare solution design can be achieved through a diverse range of approaches and tools. Interviews emerge as a valuable means to delve into their needs, inclinations, anticipations and firsthand encounters linked to the issue or potential. Surveys provide an efficient avenue to gather both quantitative and qualitative insights from a broad spectrum of patients and stakeholders. Focus groups offer an avenue for collective discourse, nurturing the generation of ideas, viewpoints, and constructive input. Workshops stand as platforms for joint solution crafting, employing brainstorming, visualization, outlining, prototyping, and testing techniques.

Photographs of the current healing environment are a powerful tool to get their attention - to help overcome neg. stereotypes and that "cuz, we've always done it that way." Healthcare jargon, acronyms, abbreviations are a constant challenge for patients navigating their care, and new people getting to their work location. I also like to do a wheelchair CAM or Gurney Cam on the way to surgery to help build empathy of walking in the patients shoes. Having designers sleep in an inpatient bed for one night with the door open can also be enlightening.

🧑⚕️👩⚕️ To develop new health solutions that are accepted by the market, you do not only need to include patients and stakeholders in the co-design method, it is essential to include the PHYSICIANS in order to take into account the solutions can fit their daily challenges in clinical tasks

According to me some methods and tools for engaging patients and stakeholders to co-design healthcare solutions: 1. Workshops: Use brainstorming, mapping, sketching, prototyping and testing techniques to co-create solutions. 2. Observe in natural settings such as clinics, hospitals, or homes to understand behaviours, interactions, and contexts related to the problem or opportunity. 3. Organize focus groups for patients and their families. 4. Interviews: Interview staff, patients & families 5. Gather patient diary studies. 6. Usability tests 7. Cognitive walkthroughs 8. Experience-Based Co-Design (EBCD): Explore the experiences of those who use and deliver healthcare services. 9. Patient journey mapping 10. Experience-based surveys

Finding the Right Balance: Too many voices can create confusion. The challenge lies in ensuring that everyone's voice is heard without losing focus. Resource Constraints: Time and financial constraints can limit engagement.

Getting people's TIME is the greatest challenge. But the right people will make or find the time. I like to use the employee and MD assessment phase as a covert way to our recruit the right change agents. Not just to co-design as cultural architects, but to have them want to put on a hard hat and help us build it as well.

Challenges of Co-designing healthcare solutions: 1. Co-design projects can be costly & may lack financial & human resources 2. Co-design involves listening to different perspectives & understanding each person's reality 3. Some service users may have never been involved in improvement activities before 4. Data analysis - Co-design process can involve several rounds of participant engagement 5. Participant recruitment - Co-design can impact the roles of stakeholders in design or research process 6. Lack of understanding of what co-design is & how it can be used to improve healthcare 7. Co-designing can be time-consuming, resource-intensive & complex 8. Co-design may require flexibility & adaptation to changing needs & feedback of users

Challenges Faced by Multinational Online Startups in the Healthcare Sector: Besides the inherent limitations in co-design of the healthcare solutions, startups or companies with teams dispersed across different countries/continents encounter additional challenges. These issues extend beyond mere coordination of time zones and power dynamics among team members. They encompass technical obstacles, language barriers, and a lack of familiarity with the scope of responsibilities of colleagues. Moreover, since there is no direct interaction between potential customers and team members, and market and customer research relies predominantly on quantitative data rather than qualitative insights, the designed solutions lack flexibility intended.

Build Radical Relationships: Foster an environment of trust and respect. Unleashing Your Inner Fire: Encourage creativity and be passionate about the solutions. Proceed until Apprehended: Don’t wait for permission to innovate. Keep pushing the boundaries.

Listen. It is incredible how many healthcare solutions are designed by people with no medical background or no direct medical experience. Solutions should be designed to meet the needs of the patients and providers first, and too often it is influenced by outsiders causing more inefficiency, extra time, and wasted resources.

If those you co-design with eventually become your clients, don't forget to thank them with a special offer or an exclusive discount. This can go a long way in creating fanatic brand ambassadors.

Co-designing for healthcare solutions involves engaging patients, family, staff & other stakeholders. The goal is to create patient-focused service improvements that are tailored to the needs of end-users. Four tips for co-designing healthcare solutions: 1. Identify a challenge or opportunity for improvement. 2. Engage stakeholders - Use interviews to explore the needs, preferences, expectations & experiences of patients and other stakeholders 3. Use co-design strategies to include end-users experiences in research, generating ideas for patient-focused service improvements & tailoring interventions 4. Co-design all the way through for faster adoption, acceleration of uptake of the solution & to minimize issues around usability

We need executive team buy-in, participation, ownership and mutual accountability. They must take an active role after the co-design to lead my example, support and encourage or this house of cards will fall.

The greatest enemy of co-design is dis·trac·tion·itis. That condition whereby people lose our focus because of multiple priorities, competing or conflicting priorities. We have got to build a process whereby the organization allocates time, energy, and money to support the long-term success of this project. This cannot be another "initiative", "program" or "event", it has to be woven into the DNA of our organization… this is how we get stuff done. It has to be woven into our daily habits, otherwise this too will pass.

Co-designing healthcare is not just a method; it's a philosophy. It's about falling in love with the problem and finding a way to make it easy for people. It involves understanding the needs, wants, and experiences of those at the heart of the healthcare system. Remember, co-designing healthcare is about showing love, empathy, and care. It's about embracing the principles of "Know Me, Surprise Me, Value Me, Care For Me, and Make It Easy For Me." By engaging the very people who use and deliver healthcare, we can create a system that is not only efficient and effective but also human.

Every healthcare organization and system must have a Patient and Family Advisory Board. This Board should have direct access to the CEO, C-Suite, as well as the Board of Directors. This board is a wonderful place to co-develop patient-centered solutions.

Co-designing process in healthcare involves six steps • Engage and align • Explore and connect • Imagine and decide • Create and test • Co-implement and co-evaluate • Share and celebrate There are many tools and methods available for co-designing such as: • Brainstorming • Prototyping • Testing • Feedback • Storytelling • Gamification

I fully support @Geoffrey M. Roche's response regarding PFACs and their importance. I will add that it is imperative to equip the PFAC with a skillful and dedicated facilitator who can thoughtfully guide the conversations through for "quick wins", as our healthcare colleagues need to see that their collaborative and supportive efforts can pay off, for them as well!