How Design Thinking Can Improve The Patient Experience and Provide Innovation in Hospital Care Delivery
Aidi Xu · OhioLink ETD Center (Ohio Library and Information Network) · 2016
Design thinking methodology is becoming a new approach to understand and determine the true need of patients and familyies and to generate a better solution for healthcare service in the hospital.There are two frameworks for design thinking: design thinking in the management realm and in the design realm.In this thesis design thinking is defined from a designer's perspective: the whole process of how professional designers design.The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that design thinking has a positive impact on a patient experience and provide innovation in hospital care delivery.This thesis also describes the value professional designers have brought to hospital projects.In the research, three design projects with different levels of designers' integration were analyzed.All three projects are from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.Results indicate that generally design thinking has a positive impact on hospital design projects.However, the impact varies according to a designer's integrated level; the better a designer is integrated, the more effective the solutions will be.In addition, the more types of designers and stakeholders that are integrated the more diverse opportunities will be generated and reviewed during the design process.Furthermore, by learning and practicing the general design thinking process and design techniques, hospital staff can generate more empathetic insights, think more creatively, and push the design solutions more efficiently.Research findings suggest that a successful hospital design project will need the hospital staff to learn both design thinking process and design techniques.More importantly, they must learn how to work with designers and know each other's capabilities.