Human Centered Design in Healthcare #askpatients – #HITsm Chat Topic

We’re excited to share the topic and questions for this week’s #HITsm chat happening Friday, 9/21 at Noon ET (9 AM PT). This week’s chat will be hosted by Jen Horonjeff (@jhoronjeff) from @Savvy_Coop on the topic of “Human Centered Design in Healthcare #askpatients“.

I, Jen Horonjeff, have a confession – I’m one of the dreaded “non-compliant” patients you hear about. I have been living with juvenile arthritis and other autoimmune diseases for 33 years, so I often have a complex treatment plan. One of my biggest offenses is I don’t get my blood work done every four weeks, which is the regularity for which my doctor has ordered my labs.

I don’t have a fear of needles, it’s also relatively quick to drop into the lab and do, so why don’t I do it?

Because every time I do, the system fails me. The lab inevitably sends me a bill for an exorbitant amount of money claiming my insurance won’t cover it. That’s incorrect, they will, it’s just been billed incorrectly. Yet it’s up to me as a patient to sit on the phone for hours with the lab, the insurance company, my doctor’s office, and probably a friend to vent about it…again.

Healthcare, its systems, products and services, are supposed to improve the lives of patients and families, not create more headaches. But the problem is, until recently, no one really ever asked the patients what they were going through, what mattered to them, or their input how to fix it. Patients have been the recipients of the systems we develop, rather than the co-creators.

This is where human-centered design comes in. Human-centered design is about taking the time to #askpatients and design solutions to fit them, rather than continually have them navigate systems and tools that, at times, feel like a cruel joke. I’m not a bad patient because I don’t get my labs done. I am just exhausted by a system that did not incorporate proper human-centered design.

We all have a role to play to improve this. After a lifetime of stumbling through the healthcare system, I decided to do something about it and started Savvy Cooperative. Savvy is a patient-owned co-op that provides a marketplace for patient insights. Our goal is to make it so easy to connect and work with patients and healthcare consumers there is no excuse not to. I believe the future of healthcare is co-designed with patients.

As you go about your work or interface with the healthcare system, I hope you’ll be on the lookout for all the hoops patients jump through and think, “did anyone #askpatients about this?”

If you need examples where lack of human-centered design affects patients, check out some of our #MessedUpPtExp videos, featuring our friendly Savvy Puppets. Then, join us for this week’s #HITsm chat where we’ll discuss it in further detail.

Topics for this week’s #HITsm Chat:
Ice Breaker: We’ve got a Spotify playlist going of song titles that describe the current state of healthcare – what would you add to our #HealthcareSoundtrack? #HITsm

T1: Everyone has one, what’s one of the messed up patient experiences you’ve personally gone through or heard someone else go through that showed lack of human-centered design? #HITsm

T2: How can technology help to ease these headaches and improve the patient experience, rather than make it worse (feel free to use responses from T1 for inspiration!)? #HITsm

T3: Do you think patients can bring unique and valuable perspectives to the table that can make these technologies even better, and how so? #HITsm

T4: Let’s lay it out there, what are the reasons you have heard for why people or companies don’t work more directly with patients? #HITsm

T5: Some of the big consumer brands have mastered the user experience, but what do they need to do to truly improve the patient experience? #HITsm

Bonus: Who are some of the companies or individuals you feel are winning at human-centered design in healthcare, and what are they doing to show that? #HITsm

Upcoming #HITsm Chat Schedule
9/28 – How Does Interoperability Affect Technology Adoption in Healthcare?
Hosted by Niko Skievaski @niko_ski from @redox

10/5 – Medication Compliance & Drug Monitoring
Hosted by Joy Rios (@askjoyrios) and Robin Roberts (@rrobertsehealth)

10/12 – TBD
Hosted by Janet Kennedy (@getsocialhealth) and Carol Bush (@TheSocialNurse) from the Healthcare Marketing Network

We look forward to learning from the #HITsm community! As always, let us know if you’d like to host a future #HITsm chat or if you know someone you think we should invite to host.

If you’re searching for the latest #HITsm chat, you can always find the latest #HITsm chat and schedule of chats here.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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