Prototyping for Healthcare Innovation

Abstract

This chapter provides reflections from an experienced industrial designer on the importance of prototyping as part of the design process. She reflects on the criticality of creating low-fidelity prototypes in developing healthcare technologies with case examples of developing child-friendly PPE and a pain assessment device, including a frank discussion of the challenges involved in developing these projects to testable prototype stages. The chapter concludes with four principles for people-centred design making in healthcare—making for engaging, making meaning, making stories, and making language.

Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that focuses on empathy and collaboration to develop solutions that are user-centric, feasible, and effective. When applied to healthcare innovation, co-design and design thinking involves understanding the needs and experiences of patients, healthcare providers, and other stakeholders. It also involves prototyping and testing solutions to ensure that they meet these needs and are feasible to implement—and it is co-designing with technology and prototyping for healthcare innovation that is the focus of this chapter.

1 Understanding Prototyping in the Design Research Process

Co-designing with end-users and stakeholders is essential in healthcare innovation. Patients and healthcare providers are the ones who will ultimately use the solutions developed, so their insights and feedback are crucial. By involving them in the design process, healthcare providers can ensure that the solutions developed are user-centric and meet the needs of those who will use them. Prototyping is a crucial step in the design research process, allowing designers to test and refine the functionality and usability of their solutions. It involves creating low-fidelity versions of a solution to test and refine its functionality and usability. It also helps designers to identify potential issues and challenges that may arise during implementation, enabling designers to address them before the solution is fully developed. By creating low-fidelity versions of their solutions, designers can test their ideas and make changes quickly and cost-effectively.

The use of technology is becoming increasingly prevalent in healthcare innovation, and prototyping is critical when designing with technology. Technology can be complex and difficult to implement, so prototyping can help to identify potential issues and challenges and ensure that the solution developed is feasible and effective. In the following sections, I reflect on how assisting, enabling and learning from people’s experiences, prototypes play a vital role in the research process in Design for Healthcare innovation, drawing on two key projects that took place within the HEAL Program which I conducted with a team of design researchers and clinicians from three different hospitals. The first is a facial PPE for Paediatric Wards, and the second is an interactive device for assessing pain in paediatric wards. Drawing on these projects, I reflect on the need of design thinking and prototyping, and then distil the challenges and lessons learned in each project—resulting in four principles to consider in the use of prototyping as part of design thinking session: (i) making for engaging, (ii) meaning making, (iii) making stories, and (iv) making language. Finally, I discuss the role of designers in improving patient experiences in healthcare through the use of co-design, design thinking, and prototypes.

2 Design Thinking, Co-Design and Prototyping in Human-Centred-Design for Healthcare Innovation

Healthcare and patient experience are intimately linked, with positive experiences critical to successful treatment outcomes [1]. Leaving experiences to chance can negatively affect the way patients internalize processes, policies, and services. Designers play a vital role in healthcare innovation, creating tangible objects, digital systems, and designed experiences that directly impact patient and caregiver well-being. By designing patient experiences through all touchpoints of the healthcare service, the work of design researchers and designers can result in patients feeling more comfortable, calm, and secure, improving their overall experience.

As discussed in the chapters in this book, co-design and design thinking are two processes that designers use to achieve this goal. Co-design is a collaborative approach that involves identifying a problem and developing a solution with the end-user through research and exploration [2, 3]. Design thinking, on the other hand, involves comprehending users, questioning assumptions, and redefining problems to identify various solutions in a methodical step-by-step process [3, 4]. While different from co-design, design thinking also leads to improved patient experiences in healthcare.

Improving patient experience in healthcare innovation requires a Human Centred Design (HCD) approach, which has been largely adopted in the healthcare sector for quality improvement solutions. We delve into the discussion of the connections across Design Thinking, Co-design and HCD in Chapter “Co-designing Design Thinking Workshops: From Observations to Quality Improvement Insights for Healthcare Innovation”: Co-designing Design Thinking Workshops. Here we further explain that fundamentally, HCD lends a problem-solving approach process that begins with understanding the human factors and context surrounding a challenge [5]. HCD has been widely adopted in healthcare innovation for its systemic and humane approach, as well as its ability to foster creativity and facilitate change. By bridging the gap between designers and end-users, HCD allows for a better understanding of current practices and enables a collaborative envisioning of an alternative future. Conceptually, my approach to research in Design for Health utilizes Human Centred Design (HCD) principles to gain insight into people’s health experiences in the context of the individual, their health, and technology. HCD supports my investigation on how people interact with technology and the healthcare system, and the impact that each of these factors has on the other, where a key part of the HCD process is the use of prototypes.

3 The Value of Prototyping

Prototypes are tangible representations of abstract ideas used in design research to generate knowledge, transforming vague and abstract concepts into concrete forms that can be analysed and evaluated [4]. Prototyping is making a preliminary model of something, from which other forms or products are developed. It is a representation of a design idea, used to generate learnings for the final development or build. Prototyping is action oriented, with the intention of creating a tangible product. It moves people beyond talking into active creating and design doing. Typically, prototypes are built in iterative processes, where the lessons learned from one iteration informs the build of the next version. The design question for prototyping is always: what can be learned from this model? Prototypes can be done with a minimal investment of money or resources, and with a minimal investment of time. Its main power is that prototyping is a generative technique, from which plenty of learning is distilled by all the participating (e.g., PPE with nurses, parents and children, as I discuss later in this chapter).

While prototypes were initially used to refine products before production, they now have diverse applications depending on the design context and purpose. Prototypes are instrumental in developing and realizing new design solutions, serving as a visual representation and validation tool for experimentation. They play a critical role in the transition from idea to final product, particularly in the early exploratory phases of design, providing immediate and factual feedback to move from imagination to reality. Designers use prototypes to envision solutions, explore new fields, and prompt discussions on contemporary issues and potential scenarios.

This principle of transitioning from vagueness to clarity using prototypes is a central tenet of my research in Design for Health because prototypes enable users to experience design solutions and provide a tangible representation of abstract ideas. Prototypes as exploration and proof-of-concept tools allow me to explore and demonstrate possible patient experiences through all touchpoints of the healthcare service. Enabling users to experience desired or potential design solutions can help stakeholders and consumers to envision, discuss and assess profound changes in the way that people access and perceive healthcare. These changes can ultimately lead to improved treatment outcomes and better patient experiences.

4 My Approach as an Industrial Designer in Design for Health

As a Design for Health researcher, my work centres around the transformation towards patient-centric health services through Design for Health 4.0. which utilises smart technologies to increase access to health care, improve diagnosis and enhance patient treatment. Most of these advances are positioned in the Digital Health realm, which often relies on screen-based design such as Apps. Not much has been developed for personal health technologies for use at home—for example: smart watches or VR platforms for distraction therapy-, where healthcare transformation is currently being challenged by the early abandonment of personal health-tech devices and a lack of independent testing in the market. In response to this, Australia has recognized the need for global competitiveness and expertise to build reliable health-tech for end-users. My research aims to advance Australia’s agenda in Health by focusing on user-centred research processes and launching proof-of-concept prototypes to engage stakeholders. By doing so, my work positions Design at the forefront of healthcare innovation.

In this context, my research is focused on co-designing and developing reliable health-tech for end users to advance Australia’s innovation agenda in Health. A critical aspect of my work is collaboration with all stakeholders: decision makers and consumers (or end-users) so that solutions meet their needs, clinical requirements and the Healthcare system regulations. My distinctive approach to this is based on my research through proof-of-concept prototypes that engages stakeholders throughout the user centred research and design processes. I develop prototypes as a research tool to: (i) foster and engage teams into developing transdisciplinary methods for research validation, and (ii) engage key stakeholders in user centred research processes design of personal health technologies. All of this is supported by a Human Centred Design (HCD) lens that I employ to understand people’s health experiences within the context of the person, health and technology. I investigate people interactions with technology and the healthcare system, and the impact of each of these factors on each other. My HCD approach to design thinking for quality improvement in healthcare recognises that working with clinicians and healthcare system stakeholders require a scaffolded approach, as described in Chapter “Co-designing Design Thinking Workshops: From Observations to Quality Improvement Insights for Healthcare Innovation” [6].

Prioritising the end-user (patient, carer or clinician) in person-centred self-healthcare solutions are crucial to the scalability and effective solutions for healthcare innovation. Understanding people’s actions in relation to their healthcare needs and to their of use of technologies in this context, requires examining how people engage and use those tools. Engaging end-users and partners is critical in this research process, and my use of generating prototypes as research tools has provided rich insights and increased understanding of people’s experiences of health enabled by technologies. This is my person-centred design for health model, which is represented in the following diagram (Fig. 1):

Fig. 1

Chamorro-Koc’s person-centred design for health concept model

I apply this model in my Design for Health projects that range from injury-prevention devices in sports to wearable rehabilitation devices for at-home use, interactive training devices for the community, personal protective devices for clinicians, and technology for empathy building in home-based healthcare. I will illustrate the need for person-centred solutions in relation to the two projects discussed next: facial PPE for Paediatric Wards and an interactive device for assessing pain in paediatric wards.

5 Project a: PPE for Paediatric Wards—Co-Designing Child Friendly Facial PPE

The COVID-19 global pandemic made the term Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) ubiquitous. The experience of many at work, in social environments and at work are similar: that PPE make people faceless. Reflecting on the experiences of parents and children during the pandemic, it is evident that the use of PPEs has brought about unique challenges. Parents expressed their difficulty in identifying their children at the school pick up line when they are all wearing masks. This situation is not limited to schools but extends to healthcare environments as well, where a personal connection between healthcare professionals and patients is crucial to therapeutic practices.

5.1 The Need for Person-Centred Solutions: A Mix-Methods Approach

PPE can be scary, unfriendly, and confronting for children, which, in turn, can have a significant impact on the ability of Health Care Professionals (HCPs) to build rapport and a safe, trusting relationship with children and their families. The use of PPEs affects the communication between healthcare professionals and patients who require lip-reading or are hearing impaired. It also affects the ability of healthcare professionals to recognize their patients and for patients to understand their doctors’ instructions. These challenges can impact the trust that is necessary for effective therapeutic treatment. Although much was done globally to provide different solutions for facial PPEs and overcome supply shortages, access issues and debates regarding the efficacy of PPE in a healthcare context, the voice of one group has remained largely silent—children.

Our Child-friendly PPE project addressed these issues and found innovative solutions to help build stronger connections between healthcare providers and patients. In this project, we worked with the Sunshine Coast University Hospital and Queensland Children’s Hospital to develop less frightening PPE for HCPs to wear.

Our initial focus was on understanding the experience of children of different ages, their families, and clinicians during the therapeutic process while wearing personal protective equipment (PPE). We wanted to uncover their perceptions and emotions towards PPE and the challenges clinicians faced while interacting with children. We conducted quantitative surveys and virtual qualitative field observations in participating hospitals to gain insights into the interactions between clinicians, children, and their carers while using PPE. The field observations were conducted remotely, adhering to clinical protocols, using smart video tripods that captured the child’s emotional responses and the clinician’s movements and interactions with the environment. These observations were analysed using specialised software for qualitative analysis in behaviour research.

Our research allowed us to understand the challenges faced by clinicians and the emotional responses of children and their families towards PPE. It gave us an opportunity to create innovative PPE designs that are not only effective but also meet the needs of end-users. The co-design process ensured that the end-users’ needs were integrated into the PPE design, allowing us to create PPE that is both functional and comfortable. The findings from the survey and field observation analysis informed and generated new opportunities for PPE design [7]. Our design team participated in a design sprint, resulting in two initial PPE designs and low-fidelity prototypes: Sunny and Buddy (Fig. 2). After the initial prototyping phase, we engaged end-users in a co-design process to develop new PPE design ideas and priorities. Paediatricians, nurses, children, and their carers participated in three co-design workshops, adopting a hands-on approach, creating new designs and quick prototypes that represented their ideas. From these workshops, we developed design recommendations for the design of new facial PPEs for Paediatric Wards, which also included recommendations for their future manufacturing and the environment in which PPEs are used. We hope that our recommendations will be implemented and pave the way for further research and innovation in PPE design.

Fig. 2

Sunny and Buddy initial PPE low-fidelity prototypes (top), and TAME initial prototype (bottom)

6 Project B: Assessing Pain in Paediatric Hospital Wards

The way children experience and express pain can be very different from adults, which can pose a challenge in hospital settings where accurate pain assessment is crucial to determining treatment. Children may not be able to articulate their pain as well as adults, and younger children may not be able to express it verbally at all, resorting instead to crying or becoming introverted. Additionally, societal pressures may cause some children to avoid expressing pain or appear tough. This can have a negative impact on the healthcare experience and recovery rates of paediatric patients. Although pain assessment is a core task in paediatric care, studies indicate yet are often poorly assessed and managed [8]. The current protocol of using a 1 to 10 scale or happy to sad faces to assess pain may be influenced by factors such as hospital admission, tiredness, and heightened emotions. To address this issue, our research project TAME aimed to co-design a technology tool to help healthcare professionals assess paediatric pain more accurately and empathetically [4, 9]. The focus was on enhancing the decision-making of clinicians at the initial pain assessment moment in the Emergency Room, and to provide a positive experience for both the child and the clinician. By improving pain assessment, we hope that children recovery rates and overall healthcare experiences will also improve.

6.1 The Need for Person-Centred Solutions: A Collaborative Approach to Designing TAME

This project was borne out of a shared desire amongst healthcare professionals to better understand the experience of children’s pain journeys. As we look back at the journey of this project, we are reminded of the initial curiosity that sparked it. The idea of understanding children’s pain experiences within hospitals piqued the interest of healthcare professionals and designers. The project provided a unique transdisciplinary approach that brought together healthcare professionals and designers in a collaborative effort to develop innovative solutions. The involvement of end-users, including nurses, doctors, and patients, from the outset of the project was instrumental in ensuring that the resulting research prototypes were grounded in the realities of the hospital context and services, particularly within the Emergency Department.

This collaborative approach undertook the form of interviews with clinicians and parents, which were done remotely (on Zoom) during Covid social restrictions. In addition, these interviews were complemented with a photo ethnographic approach that required clinicians to share photographs of the setting where they conducted their practice. The objective was that they could discuss opportunities and challenges through the photos during the interview. This approach proved to be beneficial as it allowed designers to work alongside healthcare professionals and gain a better understanding of the critical aspects of the problem from their perspective. The result of our collaborative and interdisciplinary approach was the development of TAME, a Paediatric Pain Metric device that utilized sensors to collect basic patient data and displayed it on a screen to indicate the pain and anxiety levels of the child in a simple and user-friendly manner. Looking back, we are grateful for the opportunity to work together and create a solution that could potentially help children in hospitals cope better with their pain. It was a humbling experience that reminded us of the power of collaboration and the importance of considering all stakeholders in the design process.

7 Challenges in Design for Health Research

The following sections discuss the main challenges encountered in the two projects and the lessons learned, before documenting four key principles for prototyping in design thinking sessions. In all projects, there are the challenges of project management and teamwork in large groups that involves academics, healthcare sector stakeholders and consumers in the process—as well as developing relationships and understanding completing timelines and changing priorities. At times, the team encountered the need to overcome the bias that design is only aesthetics, and the need to develop strategies that demonstrate the rigor of design research methodologies.

8 Challenges to the Process of Designing the Paediatric PPE

It has always been challenging for non-health researchers to conduct observations and user research in-hospitals. Ethics clearances, access to hospital sites, and patients whose lived experiences could inform the research, are most times not accessible. COVID exacerbated this problem. Our team comprising designers and clinicians was able to overcome the different access issues. Although the lengthy process of gaining ethic clearances and governance approval to share data across our different institutions, the result of this necessary administrative work was access to conduct observations and co-design sessions. Our research demonstrates that collaboration between clinicians, patients, and designers can lead to meaningful solutions that improve the quality of care provided (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

Co-designing PPEs with children, parents and clinicians in-hospital setting (top), and Four principles for Deisgn Thinking Prototyping (bottom)

9 Challenges to the Process of Designing TAME

The collaboration between designers and health professionals was beneficial in many ways, as it allowed for a more comprehensive understanding of the problem from multiple perspectives, including regulatory frameworks and expertise. Nevertheless, this project faced significant challenges, particularly the restrictions imposed by Covid, which prevented the team from conducting observations within the hospital grounds. However, the team’s commitment to design thinking strategies proved essential in enabling them to find alternative ways of collecting data remotely, such as through photo ethnography and retrospective interviews, combined with more traditional approaches like Critical Incident Interviews.

10 Design Thinking Prototyping in Design for Health: Emerging Principles

This chapter concentrated in presenting the use of prototyping in design thinking and co-design process throughout a complete Human-Centred Design development project comprising from idea generation to analysis, product development and testing. Throughout this process, prototyping was employed as a strategy for stakeholders’ engagement, as well as a tool integral to the design thinking process.

Reflecting on the entire HCD process and the role of prototyping from the lens of design thinking and co-design process, a critical element required in any prototyping process is clarity on the purpose. As discussed in Chapter “Co-designing Design Thinking Workshops: From Observations to Quality Improvement Insights for Healthcare Innovation”, prototyping is part of a scaffolded process where clarity on the purpose and expected outcomes is essential for successful design thinking workshops. Foundational to providing clarity and purpose in design thinking and codesign workshops is to discuss it with participants with the aim of achieving agreement.

In this section I elaborate on the prototyping process only and propose four principles emerging from my experience in these and other projects in Design for Health. Understanding prototypes as the act of ‘making’, these principles encapsulate four aspects to consider in the use of prototyping as part of design thinking session: (i) making for engaging, (ii) making meaning, (iii) making stories, (iv) making language. Consideration to these four aspects can improve the effectiveness of the process of prototype making in design thinking and co-design workshops.

11 Principle 1: Making for Engaging—Prototyping Is Essential for Stakeholders’ Engagement

Throughout all my projects in Design for Health, prototyping has been essential to engage clinicians, administrators and health service consumers in the conversations around the problem and the potential solutions. There are different ways in which objects and prototypes provoke engagement during a design thinking workshop: as a trigger, as testing device, as a demonstration. An object or a prototype can be used as a trigger in design thinking sessions at the initial stage of a project, or in sessions where familiarisation of participants with each other is required. A prototype as a trigger can be thought of as an ‘icebreaker’ to help everyone involved tune into the problem at hand and to align perspectives on the purpose of the session. A prototype as a testing device, can be used mid-way projects, in co-design sessions that aim at elaborating on an initial idea. Such prototype would be a low-fidelity model, one that is not polished, to provoke participants to discuss new ideas around it. A prototype as a demonstration is the type of prototype that engage participants into making their ideas into reality. It is a design thinking ideation workshop where participants are provided a clear purpose of the making session and the prototyping process becomes a vehicle for discussion of ideas and demonstration of how things ‘might’ look like or work. In my experience, a successful use of prototyping for engaging in a design thinking session exceeds the participation element and further, it enables participants to attain a sense of ownership and commitment to the project process.

12 Principle 2: Making Meaning: Prototyping Brings out Context and Knowledge

Through the act of making, we express meaning that represents our lived experiences and knowledge. In Design literature this has been referred as ‘artifacts’ expressing mental diagrams or mental models of the human experience [10]. This means that prototyping presents a vehicle for participants in a design thinking workshop to communicate what they know from their experience, as a patient or carer, or as a clinician or healthcare administrator. Their views would be captured in what they represent through prototyping. Awareness of prototyping as meaning making is instrumental for facilitators in design thinking workshops to gain insights on the different experiences and perspectives brought to the workshop session, and to the opportunity of further provoking discussion about the context in which such experiences have taken place. It is in this process that participants and facilitators of the design thinking workshop, make knowledge around the table visible to all, helping to promote empathy in participants through the make and use of a prototype to demonstrate their experiences and the context of them.

13 Principle 3: Making Stories: Prototyping Helps Envision Scenarios

Because prototyping is an act of making and it expresses our experience and knowledge, it also provides a vehicle for participants to represent their current experience as well as their dreamed or desired ones. In Chapter “Co-designing Design Thinking Workshops: From Observations to Quality Improvement Insights for Healthcare Innovation” we discuss a design thinking session with clinical stakeholders where we touched on the use of scenarios. In healthcare, scenarios represent a systems view, patients or process flow, or a therapeutic procedure. In this context, prototyping helps manifest those views, process or procedures. In projects where opportunity for design thinking workshops is provided throughout the life of the project, prototyping can be effectively used in the initial stages to demonstrate those scenarios where the problem is experienced, to the later stages where prototyping is employed to manifest ideal solutions, and later on to test final solutions for refinement. In this manner, prototyping provides: (i) a platform for all different knowledge and experience around the design thinking table, to share their views and solutions on a given problem, and the (ii) opportunity for participants to co-discover alternative or new pathways to different solutions situated into potential scenarios of use. The stories that surround or complement prototypes at design thinking sessions are often extremely memorable, and serve as a unifying catalyst for change.

14 Principle 4: Making Language: Prototyping Is ‘Design Doing’ in your Own Way

In Chapter “Co-designing Design Thinking Workshops: From Observations to Quality Improvement Insights for Healthcare Innovation” we discussed the use of LEGO bricks in a design thinking workshop with a clinical team. In that project, prototyping was a part of a three-hour session to help the teams to brainstorm solutions. The bricks provided a familiar medium to all participants to make representations of their ideas in a short time. This case provides a good example of the importance of prototyping being presented as an accessible tool. Prototyping in design thinking sessions needs to consider participants’ skills, knowledge and experience in order to determine what materials and methods can be employed in the session. It needs be presented to participants as: accessible, friendly, easy and familiar. The task of making can be intimidating for many, and therefore, consideration to the prototyping medium (materials, tools and methods) is critical to help participants focus on the ideas and not on challenges around making. In the examples presented in this chapter, design thinking prototyping sessions have been done with clinicians, parents and children, offering different prototyping mediums and achieving a range of different results. In these sessions, a ‘designer assistant’ was provided, to reassure participants that help was at hand if they felt challenges during the making process. Nevertheless, in all our sessions, participants worked on their own prototypes without requesting help.

15 Conclusions

Prototyping as part of a design thinking process is a transformative experience in itself. As discussed in this chapter, prototyping bridges the gap between the abstract and the concrete, and it helps the process from imagination to reality. Beyond the act of making —or what we called ‘design doing’— prototyping is a vehicle that enables all participants to share a transformative experience during the design thinking process. The four principles presented demonstrate how prototyping transform the thinking of the experience into an actual experience. Through the process of prototyping for engaging, revealing lived experiences, sharing stories, dreaming and co-discovering solutions, prototyping is a design thinking that allows facilitators and participants the sharing of and the learning from experiences in real time.

The experience and learnings from these projects have led to many more opportunities for applied design research and design thinking through prototyping in healthcare innovation. One of these opportunities is our recently awarded $2million government funded three-year grant in collaboration with a leading orthotics manufacturing company for the project: Design-led advanced manufacturing of smart orthotics for remote Australia (2021–2024). This is an Australian Cooperative Research Centre Project (CRC-P) grant that focuses on utilising digital technology to enhance the supply chain of orthotic solutions for Diabetic Foot Disease (DFD) patients in regional hospitals. This project involves a leading QLD based SMEs specialised in digital manufacturing technologies of orthotics —i-Orthotics Pty Ltd—, a regional Queensland hospital — Mt. Isa Hospital at North West Hospital Services (NWHS)— and a Brisbane based Allied Health group —Healthia Group—. The proposed enhanced supply chain would: (i) reduce the waiting time for DFD patients in receiving prescribed footwear components; and (ii) support the production of footwear solutions that are fabricated considering DFD patients’ personal requirements utilising advanced manufacturing workflows.

Initiated as a request from Mt. Isa North West Hospital and Health Service and with the support of Queensland Health Bridge Lab and QUT HEAL Program, we conducted a field observation and scoping study to understand the problem and the opportunity to improve health outcomes through design [11]. We uncovered the critical need to undertake a multidisciplinary approach to the project that involves: design research to engage the indigenous community—chiefly the Kalkadoon people of the Mt. Isa region of Queensland, biomedical studies to identify suitable digital technology for foot scanning for orthotics prescription, advanced manufacturing technology for the design and manufacturing of customised orthotics, cultural studies methodology to undertake this project in a cultural responsive approach, and service design and marketing research to develop a digitised workflow that can be adopted by industry and health services. In this project we aim to develop an enhanced patient-centric supply chain of orthotics for DFD patients in regional hospitals, and to improve access and timeliness of clinical data about the use and treatment effectiveness of custom orthotics. Figure 4 outlines the different aspects of our project and pictures our all-female team.

Fig. 4

The CRC-P project and project team

This project addresses the problem of patient compliance with using prescribed footwear in the regions, with impacts including patients’ unsuccessful recovery and higher risk of amputation. DFD patients typically fail to comply due to long wait times post-surgery in receiving prescribed footwear, and due to footwear being inadequate to the context of their everyday life activities. The CRC-P project demonstrates the value of design research and design thinking in bringing together all stakeholders in healthcare innovation and developing a multidisciplinary approach to translational research and into applied solutions that can be manufactured. The projects discussed in this chapter provided the evidence to support the CRC-P project bid, effectively demonstrating the role of design and of prototyping in quality improvement in health services. Further, these projects shed light on how a human-centred-design methodology approach can be deployed in collaboration with clinicians towards person-centred care solutions.

As design researchers, we are responsible for the impact our work has on the world: people and planet. From this view, in enacting ‘Change by Design’, projects like our CRC-P help bring profound impact in industry and healthcare sector, by placing the spotlight on regional communities, those for whom technology advances usually do not consider their needs.