Healthcare innovation has never been more important than it is today. COVID-19 has brought this center stage globally. In addition to devastating daily statistics, the global pandemic has brought with it human stories and connections that have sustained us through this difficult and uncertain time. It’s also led to some of the most rapid changes in delivering virtual healthcare than we’ve ever seen before

Here at EchoUser, the healthcare space has been a consistent thread in our projects throughout our history. We have a longstanding partnership with Akili Interactive and recently supported the design of the first-and-only prescription treatment delivered through a video game. We helped Varian Medical Systems, a company on the cutting edge of cancer treatment, define an FDA compliant usability testing process for their products. Recently, we partnered with a team from iRhythm, a heart monitoring device maker to inform the onboarding experience for patients and healthcare professionals. And for the last three years, we’ve proudly served the American public in our work with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. 

We love working in the healthcare space not only because it is such a mission-rich area; we love it because it is the epitome of “Any Experience”, the frame we use when talking about the kind of problems we solve for. In the pandemic environment, you might say that we are collectively redesigning every experience. How we access and receive medical care and treatment is one of these things. 

As we’ve been talking about this as a team, we couldn't help but reflect on a visit we took last fall to an organization that - pandemic or not - is at the center of redesigning healthcare: Kaiser Permanente’s Garfield Innovation Center in San Leandro, Calif.

Kaiser is a behemoth in the field with 39 hospitals and 690 medical facilities in 8 states and the District of Columbia. What makes Kaiser stand out to us isn’t just that it has a dedicated center for design and innovation. Many organizations have “labs” that don’t necessarily lead to breakthroughs. For example, what Kaiser is doing - creating futures that integrate autonomous vehicles and telehealth, and solving life and cost-saving problems like hospital falls at their root are exemplars of an organization putting humans at the center, not just in today’s reality but in the one we’re all heading into.

You can learn more about Kaiser’s innovation efforts here. But before you do, we hope you’ll hear what our team took away from the visit. If you work in healthcare innovation, we’d love to hear how you are using human-centered research and design in your efforts. (And how we can help you!)

KATE’S HOT TAKE

There were many interesting and inspiring parts of our tour of the Innovation Center, but one that stood out to me was a video depicting a common scenario as it could play out in the future. The video follows an elderly couple as the husband deals with a sudden heart episode, envisioned entirely with future technology that Kaiser Permanente could develop. Through touchpoints with remote heart monitoring, autonomous vehicles, and consultations with doctors over video calls, we watch as the couple deals with the medical situation and navigates difficult decisions. 

More than the solutions depicted in the video, I kept thinking about the creativity of the video itself as a research or design artifact. Our guide explained that the video had been shown to hundreds of stakeholders within Kaiser Permanente to facilitate conversations about everything from patient privacy to the ethics of remote doctor consultations. It had even sparked the creation of practitioner best practices and corporate guidelines for how this technology should be used going forward. The video served as the central material around which patients, practitioners, and KP executives discussed the future of healthcare. 

I was inspired to think about how we can provide a similar experience to our clients. What can we deliver to incite human-centered, empathic conversations among stakeholders and their larger organization? It’s design collateral like this video that can live on for years and inspire thinking far beyond the vision it presents. 

YIFEI’S HOT TAKE

The visit opened my eyes to how Kaiser experiments with cutting edge technology like VR/AR, voice assistants, and electric fence, to run conceptual design, while at the same time, strikes a balance between delivering great patient experience and being cautious about data security. For example, when doctors have bad news for their patients, Kaise team debated whether it is appropriate to deliver the bad news in the fastest way possible, even if it is not in person, and how to address the emotional reactions if using the advanced technology. 

Some design interventions are not entirely technology-focused. Really simple solutions like the hand bar that goes directly from the bed to the bathroom makes a big difference to the overall experience. A button with that patients can order food from their beds increases their happiness and reduces the customer service friction. Any design detail that treats patients like humans is a true human-centered design. 

Kaiser embraces the IDEO concept of designing for the extremes (referring to IDEO article). The experiences of people like single mothers with kids and disabled patients in wheelchairs should be considered more important than the easy majority in the middle. When it comes to healthcare services, it is not a numbers game that influences decisions. Everyone counts and should be considered in the design process.

MARY’S HOT TAKE

At the Garfield Center, I was struck by the complexity of the system, the multitude of people they are designing with and for, and how all the complexity and research surfaces in small, unassuming details impacting patient health (and Kaiser’s business). For Kaiser, the users are not just patients and families; there are also clinical and non-clinical staff with a variety of needs, goals and motivations. There is also the broader community of government and commercial partners that impact how Kaiser works. A singular user of the system will interact with so many touchpoints and each touchpoint contributes to the ultimate healthcare experience. It was exciting to see how Kaiser is tackling the complexity of the system through robust testing, prototyping and story-telling.

After visiting the Garfield Center, I had a series of interactions with my local Kaiser hospital. I was excited for my routine exam to see what I knew Kaiser had innovated: Fancy custom headboards? Wraparound railings? Private vital readings? Self-check-in? My local Kaiser, alas, is not the cutting edge San Diego facility. I had my vitals taken in the hallway, sitting across from another patient. When it was time to get my blood drawn, I had to pull a ticket with a number and wait for my number to be called. I watched folks struggle with the ticketing device, and it was unclear how long the wait may be. That said, I was still glow-y from the tour. Even though I didn’t encounter all the trappings of the Kaiser of the Future, I know that Kaiser is thinking about how to best serve patients and staff. My experience is woven into a fabric of stories and data that will inform the next key decisions to improve things at their Oakland hospital.

VIDHI’S HOT TAKE

One of the things that stood out was how they had tailored their design process to be more comprehensive yet nimble. Methods like hands-on prototyping to pressure test patient exam rooms for edge users and building speculative video artifacts to compel a room full of people to have hard conversations. 

The other aspect that resonated with me was how systemic their view of healthcare is. They not only modeled patient rooms, waiting rooms and exam rooms but also home of patients. From solutions for the smallest patient discomforts to big cost-saving decisions were all integral to their human-centered innovation process. 

Our visit to the KP Garfield center left an impression most of all because we were witnessing all design disciplines coming together for genuine innovation; innovation that keeps business in mind while keeping users at the center of it. Healthcare has been and is now more so a  fertile ground for opportunities because there is a lot to do and a lot at stake. The visit was a great exposure to how design and innovation now lives at the center of big healthcare institutions and not only supports but drives it.