Abstract
Purpose: The University Health Network (UHN) is a global leader in patient care and advances preventative, acute, rehabilitative, and continuing care for Canadians. To accelerate better care experience, UHN launched the Integrated Care Program in 2019. The program ensures patients receive timely, comprehensive, and personalized care from hospital to home through partnerships with clinical and home care teams.
Digital health plays a critical role in improving the integrated care patient experience and care delivery, while also realizing efficiencies. We provide technologies such as a patient portal, remote care monitoring, and a 24/7 support line to empower patients to take charge of their health and improve their well-being.
This presentation will highlight our Design Thinking approach, involving patients and caregivers to co-create an integrated care experience that harnesses the power of digital health.
Methodology: The Integrated Care Program leverages innovative and non-linear Design Thinking approach to gather meaningful insights from our patients and caregivers. This human-centric approach leads to more impactful and sustainable solutions.
We focus on three iterative phases of Design Thinking. The first critical phase is building empathy. Through intentional engagement, we put ourselves in the shoes of our patients and caregivers to connect with how they feel about a particular problem or circumstance. We listen and work together on generating and prioritizing ideas that tackle the problem.
The second phase aims to build and test the solution. We hold multiple, rapid rounds of ideation, prototyping, and testing to refine and adapt the solution to align with their needs. The third phase is implementation, which entails planning and deploying the solution.
Patients and caregivers are part of each phase throughout the iterative process, which resulted in widely adopted integrated care solutions co-designed by our patients and caregivers.
Findings: We gathered feedback from patients and caregivers post implementation through surveys, interviews, and informal feedback. From their perspectives, they felt heard throughout the process. Furthermore, they felt empowered to participate in their care, reported timelier access to care, better communication with their care team, and increasingly confident in managing their care through condition-specific health teaching. Their feedback also highlighted opportunities to enhance solution features that will continue to improve accessibility and the overall experience of our patients and caregivers.
Conclusion/Implications/Recommendations: Our Design Thinking approach, involving patients and caregivers every step of the way, has been invaluable in co-creating and delivering a digitally-enabled integrated care experience. By understanding what individuals want, we can design an experience that meets the needs and expectations of our patients and caregivers. This human-centric approach leads to impactful and sustainable digital solutions. The Integrated Care Program will continue to enhance patient engagement, promote shared decision-making, and empower individuals with the right tools to support their transition to home and management of their health. In the future, we aim to measure and deliver value to our healthcare system through improved health outcomes and health equity, capacity for health human resources, and cost-efficiencies.