What are the challenges currently facing health?
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 list “good health and well-being” as it’s 3rd highest priority. The criteria for achieving this goal is defined as having attained “universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all”.
Expenditure on health services has inflated significantly over the past four decades, with combined health care spending in the world’s major regions projected to reach USD $8.7 trillion by 2020(1). The United States has the highest healthcare spending in the world, with unpaid medical bills stated as the leading cause of bankruptcy. Financial constraints on health care systems are a significant challenge facing world health today, for patients and for practice owners and staff.
Time pressures, clinician decision fatigue and unrealistic expectations upon all the key stakeholders of the medical system (patients, doctors, healthcare systems) also present as obstacles in the development of effective health care systems. as well as institutionalised deficiencies in processes used in the medical industry, embedded in ineffective practices and lacking the necessary tools for management.
The WA Health Promotion Strategic Framework targets population health in several key areas of focus – obesity, nutrition, exercise, smoking, drinking and drug use – aiming to reduce the incidence of avoidable chronic disease and injury by facilitating improvements in these factors. The overall challenge facing health systems is managing a myriad “pain points” for health care workers, patients, practice owners and admin staff.
(1) World Industry Outlook, Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals, The Economic Intelligence Unit, June 2017
Why is collaboration important in cutting edge healthcare systems/support?
As society has evolved over time, so has the definition of, and needs of, the community. In order to address health challenges facing our communities it’s pivotal to approach problems using co-operative, communal paradigm.
Employing a synergistic approach to solving problems of the medical system gains advantage from differences in skill sets and perspectives across the population. Co-creation of solutions has the potential to generate ideas and outcomes that individual players would not have arrived at on their own. Through synergy, information is shared and solutions are worked towards collaboratively, and a collective pool of innovation can be born.
How could design be relevant to innovation in health?
In order to effectively address the challenges of world health and achieve the goals established by the UN, the design of medical systems and services must be assessed and re-adjusted. The problems arising from resources are not going to magically be alleviated by focusing on individual issues. A paradigm shift in health systems locally and globally, is necessary if we are to move forward and beat the health issues of this age.
Designing communities differently to accommodate for the many health-related factors is one potential way to begin this problem. For example, if public health matters were re-framed in the community to assign ownership of health problems back to the individual themselves – pitching healthcare as the responsibility of the user ensures people can effectively look out for themselves and self-manage their health habits and care.
Design Practices: Identity 