MCHS • 2019

Researching healthcare delivery opportunities  
for an elderly, remote population

Research Strategy Journey Mapping Personas Roadmapping The whole shebang

A US hospital group briefed us to research opportunities for healthcare delivery and innovative care models for elderly demographics in remote rural areas. As part of Empathy Equation in a team of 4 researchers, I conducted interviews, synthesised insights, developed recommendations and delivered a service design model that helped the client develop a more sustainable and successful corporate strategy.

Extensive user research and insight management

Design Process

Intensive Field Work
Moving into field after initial desk research which focused on US healthcare policy & tech, we scheduled and conducted 45 in-depth interviews with patients, healthcare providers and internal stakeholders. As a team of 4 researchers, we worked for 5 weeks in the field to manage the workload as well as the emotional impact of the topic.

Agile In-Field
Already during the research field we used daily stand-ups and shareouts to cope with the amount of findings and keep the core client team in the loop. These discussions helped us to make sense out of the collected data early on and to synthesise the data into models and mappings.

Interactive Service Design Deliverables
Ultimately, we delivered detailed personas for providers as well as patients, their respective user journeys, and an ecosystem map of the client’s organisation.
These models also showed the intricacies of how healthcare is delivered, pointed out opportunities and highlighted recommendations in an interactive format. The final outcome was an illustrated future scenario to inform the client’s internal strategy.

Ensuring Client investment

Case Study

To ensure client investment and thus guarantee impact of our research, it was important to involve important stakeholders early on, align expectations and ensure enough visibility throughout the client’s organisation.

We started off the project with a 2 day kick-off with a larger audience to get an understanding of initial field challenges and opportunities to be aware of. Throughout the project, we conducted several workshops with a core client team and continuously kept stakeholders up to date.

Besides workshops with internal stakeholders (providers, management, etc.) we also kept an open door policy to let the client experience and actually participate live in interview-debriefs, synthesis and concepting so they could really be involved.

Results

The research we conducted ultimately helped convince the client to shift their acquisition strategy away from buying expensive but fully equipped hospitals to a more localised, healthcare-delivery-on-demand style that benefited patients and providers alike while also being cheaper. Additionally, MCHS commenced several more service design driven initiatives aiming at improving healthcare delivery.