Designing New Models for Health

The American health care system is broken. Change is an uphill battle because of the web of conflicting incentives and motivations spanning actors across this complex arena.

The Design Institute for Health sees a new future for health and health care, one that turns complex systems inside out and puts people at the center. Uniquely situated between a brand new academic medical center and a college of design and creative technologies, the Institute uses the design of specialty care clinics as an invitation to explore how we might reimagine models of both receiving and providing care.

This innovation centers around designing for the needs of two sets of humans, both people seeking care and also those providing care, and in doing so, allowed us to get rid of what does not make sense for these humans. Eliminating the waiting room at the clinics, an experience no one enjoys, provoked necessary and deeper change in how the clinic provides service and in the way it operates, especially how care providers work together.

More broadly, this clinic design is proof that change can happen, first manifesting at one point in a complex system, and serving as a catalyst for change at a greater scale. Innovations like these will drive systems change for the better, across all aspects of health.

‍