Healthcare Innovation Studio;
Business Innovation Factory / RISD
We applied design research to improve outcomes between patients and their primary-care providers.
Our team spent six weeks examining how we could better the healthcare relationship between patients and their primary-care provider. We performed interviews and focus groups with patients as well as general healthcare research. We proposed systems to create a more seamless wellness care based healthcare model.
We began by visiting a number of Primary Care physicians to see where they worked and how they provided care.
We entered their spaces and tried to put ourselves in the shoes of patients receiving care.
Some Primary Care providers did everything themselves and took a very high-tech approach to care.
Other primary care providers employed a team of people and took a more analog approach to care.
I cataloged the procedures at various types of Primary Care offices and found vastly different patient experiences.
Part of our research involved talking to focus groups and getting a general sense for what was working and not working in their relationship to their Primary Care provider.
Using quotes, we catalogued the experiences of various patients to put a human voice to the data.
I familiarized myself with the processes involved in Primary Care interventions and synthesized these for myself and others.
Summary recommendations were made based on our research including one option of building a "Healthcare Alliance." This would be a network of facilities linked together to encourage wellness-based care for patients.
We showed how the Healthcare Alliance might play out in a patient's individual experience.
Another suggestion was the concept of the "Clustered Micro-practice." Micro-practices - while providing highly regarded care - lacked access to specialized services and resources that their patients sometimes needed. This was conceived of as a hybrid solution.
This is an example of how the Clustered Micro-practice might play out in a patient's individual experience.