 What are the main trends in healthcare that affect product innovation?
There are the obvious progressions in technology, such as mobile connectivity and digital imaging which we want to bring into health innovation. While the big shift in healthcare itself is that treatment and care are increasingly being offered in a non-hospital environment. Patients are returning home as soon as possible, as governments and insurance providers across the world try to reduce the time spent in hospital, to save costs. Philips is exploring ways to deliver and manage care in these new settings. How do we help care-givers and medical staff monitor patients who need to follow a health regime and recuperate in a remote environment? At the same time we want to help patients themselves who may have to follow a course of medication, exercise or diet that has been prescribed and is critical to their treatment and recovery.
How does this change how designers work?
The design process doesn’t change when the care setting is outside the clinical domain, but we have to cast our net much wider to more situations and amongst a broader spread of medical skills when we undertake research. We now have to consult not only with medical staff, but a broader range of care-givers with less or no medical training, which can affect how a product is designed and used.
Why is usability so important in healthcare?
Usability is critical for any medical device and is a key element of our product design and innovation. A product may be technically excellent, but if there is a problem with how it is used or applied, its effectiveness will be impaired. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the USA has recently reinforced the importance of this in new draft guidance recommending companies to use modern, advanced principles of usability engineering when developing new healthcare devices.
For example when designing mobile bedside monitoring devices, the very practical ergonomic issues around the mechanics of moving the patient and the machine, as well as the tubes and wires etc needs to be fully assessed. We spend a lot of time addressing handling issues and always produce experiential prototypes to test usability and also help speed up innovation. The earlier you prototype, the quicker you get through the iterative process of design and development. Of course in this specific case wireless technologies are helping solve some of the problems in monitoring and mobility.
What do you enjoy most working in the field of Healthcare Design?
You feel you are designing something that really matters and has a meaningful benefit to people. If you do your job well, you can improve people’s experience of healthcare and actually help them to get better. In Healthcare you are working on products that last a long time (a lot longer than the average consumer product) and are tackling serious issues. For example, we’re now working on the next generation of products for emergency services. We’re accompanying staff in ambulances, going to emergency departments around the world, and speaking with people on the front line. It’s great to get immersed in the issues and challenges to then come up with solutions that really work.
11 October 2011 | 
