Everyone has been through a healthcare experience that was less than ideal.
Despite playing a vital role in our lives, our healthcare system often feels inefficient, complicated, and outdated. Worst of all, the patient experience is often overlooked.
Nobody knows this better than patients who receive regular infusion treatments. Patients with infusion needs spend a lot of time in healthcare environments that often leave a lot to be desired.
Of course, your infusion team’s primary concern should be your physical health and ensuring you get the treatment you need, but there’s more to it than that. Today’s patients need—and deserve—modern, high-quality care experiences that take a holistic approach and treat the whole person.
That’s where human-centered design comes in.
What is human-centered design?
Human-centered design keeps people at the center of any experience that’s being created. You’ll find it used in everything from consumer product design to digital experiences. HCD principles require a deep understanding of human needs—what makes people happy, what motivates people, and what problems need to be solved.
In healthcare, human-centered design might mean:
- Reimagined clinics and care experiences that anticipate the unique challenges of their patients and solve them with technology solutions
- Care teams with deep understanding of human behavior and needs
- A holistic patient experience that removes barriers to quality care, from first appointment through follow-ups
While HCD methods are not always easy to execute, we believe they’re a requirement for delivering the best possible care for our patients.
How human-centered design benefits patients
In today’s complex healthcare landscape, human-centered design can benefit patients in four key ways.
Embracing data-driven care
There’s no denying that technology plays a central role in the human experience, so it’s no wonder healthcare solutions increasingly rely on this resource.
With a wealth of data at our collective fingertips, care providers creating patient experiences are informed by actionable insights during every stage of the design process, from the initial build-out of an experience through the invaluable feedback received by real patients.
This data allows for endless iteration, ensuring the patient experience will only get better over time.
Removing friction and barriers
Patient satisfaction is influenced by dozens of factors. From the moment you seek care to post-treatment follow-up, human-centered design can help improve every touchpoint.
Here are a few examples of features that could come out of a human-centered design approach:
- An easy-to-use patient app for scheduling infusion appointments and communicating with your care team
- A redesigned entrance without impersonal check-in desks or separating glass
- No long waits (you are on time; we should be too)
- Tablets for healthcare professionals, instead of wall-mounted computers that can make patient-provider interactions feel impersonal
- Private suites with snacks, entertainment, and personally-selected comforts—or a community setting with other infusion patients if that’s your preference
- Prompt and kind after-care follow-ups
Infusing empathy
Empathy is at the core of human-centered design thinking. It involves stepping into every pair of shoes—patients’, caregivers’, and healthcare providers’—to understand every unique perspective.
This practice gives a design team valuable insights that inform their work. It’s an iterative process, with the end user experiences acting as a constant catalyst for improvement.
And when it’s done correctly, all parties benefit from a better experience that meets their unique needs. Best of all, the outcome is an experience that is warm, inviting, and truly personalized.
Creating a holistic experience
Human-centered design invites creators to build healthcare experiences that go beyond the walls of the clinic. That means designers don’t just focus on the time spent interacting with care providers within the clinic environment. Rather, the focus is on the complete patient experience, from phone interactions to app usage to follow-up care, and everything in between. The entire experience is seen as a journey, where each step is thoughtfully considered. And every patient’s journey is seen as part of a broader ecosystem, to enable a holistic care approach that addresses the full spectrum of the patient’s needs.
Human-centered design at Uptiv Health
So why all this talk about human-centered design? Because for us at Uptiv, it’s more than just a trend or a buzzword. It’s our commitment to crafting the patient experience with intention.
In most infusion centers, the current experience leaves much to be desired for patients. At its worst, it’s cold, impersonal, analog and inconsistent. At best, it’s tolerable.
That’s why we created Uptiv Health. We believe that managing a serious or chronic health condition is challenging enough without having to put yourself through a negative experience every time you need an infusion.
Thanks to human-centered design, our modern, consumer-inspired infusion centers and our personalized virtual care platform are transforming the infusion experience into one that is warm, welcoming, and completely focused on the patient.
