Designing Care Services for Health Seeking

As in all sectors affected by technology, healthcare and clinical practices are headed for disruption in the near future. Every disrupting innovation will have an associated web portal - National-level deployments of e-health records (EMRs), inexpensive access to individual genomic interpretation, individualized treatment based on genetics, and ambient sensors to enable better disease management. Don’t forget, healthcare system finance and business models will also be disrupted, not because of the web, but aided and abetted by the economics of online management. How will these future outcomes affect us as individuals and what are the opportunities for web services innovation?

Of course there are many opportunities. But there is one service channel that we all are touched by, which may seem sheltered from disruptions. When we need direct care, the one service we cannot live without is clinical care from our physicians. Yet we continue to speak different languages, in spite of the easy reach of web services for unlimited personal research. As health seekers, we the public use almost any web resource to find pertinent help. Yet doctors and clinicians are professionally constrained to a world of evidence. Their IT future needs design help. For your own safety, you may not want them using most of the EMRs on the market today. How are medical practices changing with the evolution of the web? How can we improve the high tech and high touch relationship between health seekers and their clinical care?

You will takeaway:

• Understanding of current problems and opportunities in healthcare as service
• Learning how service systems are the framework for scalable service design and delivery
• Learning design principles for service systems in healthcare
• Knowing where the best opportunities are for future design contribution