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.