I have just come back from a pretty amazing two day meeting.  The Centre for Social Impact ( led by Peter Shergold) and Cisco got together with 60 senior Australian beauracrats and brought innovation experts from around the world to talk about how to innovate in the delivery of public sector policy.

Sounds like it could have been boring...but it was anything but.  When you have innovation leaders like John Kao ( re Innovation Nation), Jonty Olliff-Cooper (DAMOS) and Beth Noveck (White Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government) all talking about how to transform goverment through open engagement with citzens it was a "mind shifting" two days.

How does this relate to Digital Healthcare design. The link came first in John Kao's discusion around the use of design thinking.  Quoting Wikipedia:

"Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result. It is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success. Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the "building up" of ideas."

What became clear in the discusisons (and presentations) that followed was that this concept of design thinking has been central in the delivery of successful public sector innovations (and public sector innovation is what designing new hospitals is all about).  The innovations we heard about were driven by the public sector deeply engaging with the citizens, empowering them with the ability to gather together and exchange/build ideas.  Finally it engaged the public sector management in a way that created empathy and understanding.   Yes there were lots of web 2.0 tools and innovative ways to drive engagement and feedback, but the issue was not the technology, the issue was creating the opportunities to listen in a way that creates understanding.

This struck me as the challenge that we have in front of of us.  We are all comming to the task of how to better deliver healthcare with great personal passion, but the issue we face is can we put aside our individual passions and listen to those in the system, providers and users, so we can really uderstand their needs.

A difficult challenge, but one with great practical rewards.

For those interested in exploring this field I thought I would do a bit of a summary of the key sites active in this area.  There are few activities dedicated to the application of health IT in healthcare design, however, the X3 Summit is a major conference in the US on the subject.  On the event website at www.x3summit.com  you can see  the program for this year's conference (Duke University May 5-7) and past programs.  It gives you a good idea of what is happening in this field.

While there is not a single site dedicated to issues around Digital Healthcare Design (if I am wrong please leave a comment on the blog...I would love to know the details)  there is a large amount of acitivity around healthcare design issues in general.  One of  the leading Australian centres active in this area is CHAA (Centre for Health Assets Australia). Associate Professor Jane Carthey is Director of the Centre and it is part of the Built Enviroment Faculty at the UNSW. They are responsible for producing the Health Facility Guidelines.  This is the publication that we want to supplement with a set of Health IT guidelines.  You can find CHAA at www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/chaa/.

Internationally, the major site is probably from the Health Design Technology Institute, which was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in the US.  This group has a focus on evidense based design and has some fantastic papers on the subject that can be downloaded from their site (see www.healthdesign.org ).  All this is an important foundation to the work for developing the focus on Digital Healthcare Design in Australia.

Some other intesting sites are

• Centre for Health Systems Design
• Informed Design
• www.facilitiesnet.com/healthcarefacilities
• Picker Institute
• Healthcare Design Magazine
• Healthcare Building Ideas Magazine
• Academy of Architecture for Health
• Health Environments Research and Design Journal
• Healthcare Design Conference

I will get back to you soon with some details about an event we are organising in Australia on digital healthcare design, looking at how to design a digital hospital for 2020

Best regards

Brendan

It has been a while since I have been blogging.  The transition to Cisco (from the CEO position at HISA) temporarily diverted my attention away from blogging,  but I am now back.

Taking up the position at Cisco has opened my eyes to what is a bit of a missing link in the delivery of healthcare in Australia. 

Australia has over $20 Billion in hospitals currently in the planning, design and construction phases.  However, even with this enormous financial investment, there are no guidelines or even guiding principles for how information technology can be best included in these designs.

There is a big need for a multidisciplinary group that brings together architects, designers, engineers, IT professionals, healthcare providers and consumers to look at the interface between design and information technology. The objective is to bring these groups together and to drive innovation in healthcare delivery.  

If you are interested in this field, then join up to he Digital Hospital Design Group on The Health Hub ( see http://www.thehealthhub.org.au/pg/groups/3304/digital-healthcare-design/ ) and help us build this group and bring some guidance to the health facilities and systems that are going to deliver care to Australian communities over the 20 years.

This is an important task.  I hope it is going to take us all out of our comfort zone, with conversations involving a broad range of professionals and health consumers who have previously not had an opportunity to interact.

It is an experiment, but then the exciting parts of life, personal or professional usually are.

I hope to see you at the HUB.

If you want to send me a message to talk about involvement just click on the message function in the drop down menu and we can talk. 

See you in the Digital Healthcare Design Group.

Best regards

Brendan