Design for Care: Innovating Healthcare Experience

This book is one of the foundations for how I approach our work in my small health improvement shop. Peter Jones has done a solid job with exploring the possibility of design thinking with improved health seeker experience. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has a serious interest in designing a better experience for health seekers and providers.

Received the book very promptly, and in excellent condition, as promised. I'm very satisfied.

If you're a UX or design professional in need of an intro to healthcare, this is not it. If you're a healthcare professional, and you need an intro to design/UX, this is not it.The book's premise seems to be that healthcare is unique and deserves different methods and considerations from designers, but by its very language and approach makes it difficult to comprehend what these methods or considerations should be. It is dense beyond all reckoning: and not in the packed full of useful info kind of way -- more like in the a whole page to say something that could be one sentence kind of way.All in all, this is an odd book to come from Rosenfeld Media, who you normally see putting out extremely practical books (e.g. Card Sorting, Mental Models, Eye Tracking etc.). I work for a firm that builds applications used by healthcare professionals, have a not-insignificant library of design and design research books, and I literally can't make it through this. I basically keep picking it back up because I'm the type of person who feels guilty about not finishing books, but I can't do it. Too boring.

If healthcare institutions wish to evolve, the delivery of improved health care will have to focus on more innovative patient experiences that are more empathetic and more easily understood by the patients. This book makes a case for a systematic introduction of design thinking to challenge complex issues that move health care beyond its current limitations. Dr. Jones prioritizes personal life changing medical concerns for the average patient over that of the systematic business decisions of an institution and essentially gives both the patient and the institution a brighter lease on life. ‘Design For Care’, not only champions the patient but also offers reason to improve tools and techniques for health care institutions in order that they become more lucrative with a higher rate of successful life outcomes. -- http://www.418qe.com/design-for-care

At first glance the paperback version of this book appears densely packed with information, descriptions and prescriptions for almost every segment of health care from individual patient experiences to full whole-of-systemic projects. The word 'comprehensive' comes to mind. But when you start to read and unpack the detailed content of this text, section by section, your impression changes to one of surprise and gratitude that someone has finally put together a definitive work that is actually helpful in moving designs role in the health field forward. After all, this is what design professionals should be doing rather than simply trying to polish what is a failing system.Peter Jones offers a timely and pragmatic insight into a health system in the USA that is at a crossroads that similar health systems in many countries are or will have to come to terms with in the near future. His work provides much needed inspiration, first-hand experience and practical tips for designers working with healthcare providers and health seekers in the US that should be applicable (with adaptation) in other parts of the world. There is an honest and critical flavour to the book which suggests a timely wakeup call for a design industry focussed too closely on maintaining the status quo. This book with its underlying message of change (a good metaphor for Design) provides useful and practical guidelines for how a 'design-thinking' based movement could contribute to a new foundation (in Care) and not just a new form (technology) of future healthcare. In considering such a broad spectrum of the health landscape, readers may find some or many aspects of the work range outside their own field of design influence. However, by covering this range of topics Peter Jones shows us how all the pieces fit together into a whole-of-system view that will be necessary to address at some level eventually.Whatever your field interest or perspective in Healthcare, this book provides some well needed basic guidelines for taking action, some practical approaches to achieving your goals or at least some starting points for your own design journey. It would be beyond difficult to act on all that is contained in this work but it is undoubtedly a substantial reference resource for designers within the health field. There is one small but important exception on this endorsement; the message of care (which could be presented in much stronger and clearer terms) is a much bigger and more important concept than is represented in this work. Care, particularly as the design field understands it, is a developing and crucial concept that has vitally important implications both inside and outside the health field, and this needs to be addressed more urgently.

Advancing innovation for innovation's sake doesn't cut it. And innovation in any domain, if it is expected to make a positive and meaningful difference, should not be pursued in isolation. On the contrary, innovating with meaning in many ways can be viewed as a "contact sport." It also requires an awareness of interdependency that is fundamental to collaboration and, ultimately, success. In DESIGN FOR CARE, Dr. Jones offers a comprehensive look at the web of inclusion that characterizes the healthcare experience and provides guidelines and practices for innovating & reforming the healthcare "nonsystem" in very meaningful ways. Hippocrates would be proud!

Peter Jones's book Design for Care is dead on. If you are a designer or UX professional in healthcare or life sciences it's a must. Even if you're not, it easily extracts to other public services.