Opencast, Newcastle upon Tyne, 18 June 2024
I chaired a TechNExt 2024 fringe event hosted by Opencast on how user-centred approaches could make patient-centred healthcare in the NHS a practical reality. I framed the discussion by asking what patient-centred care means and what role design plays in it, bringing the perspective of a non-executive director at Northumbria Healthcare and a former deputy director at the Government Digital Service. The panel was:
- Dr Murray Ellender, Founder and Chief Executive, eConsult, and a practising GP
- Ute Schauberger, Service Design Practice Lead, Opencast, formerly a service designer at NHS England
- Jamie Whysall, Principal and Head of Healthcare, Netcompany
I was slightly uncomfortable with the premise, as the NHS already has plenty of experience in person-centred approaches to wellbeing, prevention, care and support.
However, it prompted a constructive discussion by bringing together healthcare professionals and digital service designers, helping to bridge the understanding gap that can exist between these communities. Ute described a culture clash between design, technology and clinical practice, with clinicians rightly risk averse where design depends on experiment, resolved only by a shared definition of patient-centred care. Murray estimated that around 30% of patients are sitting in the wrong queue for healthcare, and observed that the clinician is a user too: GP triage products that doctors could switch off won out over ones patients could use around the clock. Jamie drew on Denmark, where user-centred design is called equity by design and citizens hold their own health records, and on Netcompany’s work with NHS England to turn GP registration from paper forms into one national service, with nearly half of registrations now made outside surgery hours.
A detailed write-up is available on the Opencast blog.
The full recording is available below: