The Journal of mHealth Vol 3 Issue 1 (Feb/Mar 2016) | Page 36
Digital Healthcare: Designing the Patient Journey
Digital Healthcare:
Designing the Patient
Journey
By Keith Nurcombe
Keith Nurcombe has worked in healthcare for over twenty years spending the last few years working with businesses
in the health and technology space, most recently building O2 Health where he was Managing Director until the
end of 2012, since then he has been providing consultancy services to businesses.
UX or user experience for me is all about
how the patient travels through the complexity of the health system that we currently ask them to travel.
Why is this important you may ask?
Well, here is why, it is possibly the most
important thing we ever do when we
design healthcare systems. The patient
of old went to the GP or their physician, told them what they thought was
wrong, listened to the advice and then
often took heed of this and went merrily on their way.
What has changed in the last twenty
years?
As patients we have become educated
about what we want and we have learnt
that we have choices and with these
choices the ability to control our destiny
- to a certain extent.
When we think about user experience
and how we design our care pathways
for the modern digital health environment we have to look at what we want
to achieve clinically, and, also from a cost
perspective. Critically though, we have to
consider the patient, from start to finish
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February/March 2016
not as an afterthought!
In order to do this, we need to turn to
organisations, which are used to managing
consumer demand and interacting with
those consumers throughout all aspects of
their journey, and understand the lessons
that they have learnt over the years.
Breaking this down – what does this
mean and what are the key things to
consider?
1. The modern patient of the 21st century has decided that they will control
what happens to them and not accept,
in differing levels by patient group, what
they are told, when and without choice.
Healthcare systems mus BFB