Service Design
NHS +
The Brief
Northern Ireland has always been a unique place. Following Brexit, Northern Ireland is currently the only country to remain part of both the European Single Market and UK. This temporary arrangement is filled with uncertainty with politicians, citizens, and businesses having few answers on what the future could look like.
Consider the possible futures for Healthcare & Wellbeing of Northern Ireland in a post-Brexit world and how they could evolve over from 2022-32.
Working as a group, your objectives are as follows:
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Conduct research into current day signals of change across political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors.
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Focusing on the future of healthcare and wellbeing in Northern Ireland, model the interplay and impact of these signals into multiple possible future scenarios for Northern Ireland 10 years from now. Consider a mix of positive and negative scenarios to choose from.
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In relation to your theme, define a public or commercial strategy to navigate one or more of your future scenarios creating new value for citizens or customers.
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Based on your strategy, create the outline of a new service.
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Create a compelling narrative that communicates your evidence-based scenarios, strategy, service outline, and prototyped touchpoint. The latter touchpoint must take the form of a data visualization interface or dashboard.
The Research
We began by conducting significant desk research, exploring four key areas:
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Public healthcare
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What is the current state of public healthcare in NI, and in comparison, to other countries in the UK and further afield?
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How is funding distributed to the public system in NI?
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Private healthcare
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What is the current state of private healthcare in NI?
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What developments have been made in the private sector in the last 10 years?
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Why do people go private in NI?
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Mental Health & Wellness
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What is the state of mental health and wellness in NI?
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What are mental health and wellness trends currently on the market?
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Technology
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What are future trends in healthcare and technology?
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Our team’s diversity of lived experience and knowledge of different healthcare models brought strength to our project. One person on our team was born and raised in NI, one person was born in Hong Kong and raised in the UK, one person who was from India, and I also brought my Canadian experience to the project.
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We found that the waiting list is a key thread connecting the four areas of our research.
Questions:
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What if the waiting list doesn't decrease in 10 years?
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How does NI population's poor mental and physical health effect the NHS? (Misdiagnosis? Obesity? Poor mental health leading to poorer physical health?)
How can digitalisation and innovation reshape the future of healthcare and wellbeing?
Method
We developed a survey and received responses from 101 people living in Northern Ireland and conducted interviews with 9 healthcare workers and 4 patients in Northern Ireland.
We organized the results from the survey and interviews using affinity maps to determine the goals, motivations, pain points, and needs of our subjects.
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We mapped similar themes from within our survey and interview findings and distilled them into the following categories:
Based on the healthcare patients we interviewed, we created a patient persona to help focus our work.
Our Futuristic Service
Based on our research, we determined that we would create a service to ease the pressure long waiting lists put on the healthcare system in Northern Ireland.
Context
In 10 years, the healthcare system will have the same or maybe longer queues for waiting lists (based on our interviews with nurses and doctors). A two-tier system between public and private healthcare will emerge, with patients increasingly accessing private healthcare to meet their needs in a timely manner. However, patients will continue going back and forth between private and public to access their needs according to their income.
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In 10 years, all NHS patient records - including the Northern Ireland branch - will be digitized and the information standardized. (This will take 10 years because you have to gather patient records and from all the different trusts across NI and the rest of the UK - all of which keep their records differently.)
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Explanation of our service
We offer integrated public and private healthcare system to bring patients the best quality of care in the least amount of time. This government-sponsored service is a key part of the NHS and is central to how the NHS operates in Northern Ireland.
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Our service will guide people through the process of deciding how and when to choose public vs. private. By giving patients more information about where they are on the waiting list, they will be empowered to choose whether they should go private or public for a specific choice. Patients will be able to do initial consults online, as well as book public/private assessments using the booking calendar. They will also be able to access information that will help them prevent the illness in the first place.
Timeline
We considered how patients would feel in the waiting room at a doctor's office - anxious, afraid, out of their depth, upset, impatient - and, as part of our service, we cultivated a brand identity that would convey a sense of empowerment, reliability, transparency, equality, compassion, and respect and dignity among other traits.
We felt that pink would be a good colour to communicated care, sensitivity, and respect and green to connote growth, equilibrium, positivity, and stability – key attributes that we wanted to boldly communicate to everyone, especially those who felt confused or misguided by the current NHS system.
We also brainstormed names for the service and agreed on NHS+ for the way that it incorporated the name NHS – because our research showed that although people in NI do not receive healthcare funds directly from the NHS, it seems remains a positive source of care in the Northern Irish imagination. Moreover, the name could be easily graphically represented in a wordmark. I think that including the name NHS maintains a feeling of stability and public-centred care, while the + icon communicates a fresh improvement of a tired and overrun system. Ultimately, with the integration of private into public, I wanted people to feel like NHS+ was familiar and dependable as well as being a hub of communication (hence the speech bubble).
Service Touchpoint - App
My role was to design the app screen that would help the user decide between public of private service.
I settled on a simple design that helped our user, Jane, to explore what options were available to her based on the time of appointments, the cost, and the location. This screen provides a broad overview of options, and she can filter based on her priorities. This screen also allows Jane to click on available appointments to find out more detailed information.
Final version: