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“Human-centric” design in health care

Anyone who's ever had to navigate a confusing hospital complex or request health records from a provider has probably reached this conclusion at some point: our health care system wasn't designed for patients. And generally, they're right. Health care design has tended to revolve around the concerns of physicians, insurers, and attorneys, but arguably the most important stakeholders, patients, have largely been left out of the process. That's contributed to a deficit of consumer-friendly design in healthcare, from stressful buildings to impractical technology. "Patients have been treated as the recipients of care instead of the consumers of care," says Kai Worrell, president of Worrell, an industrial design firm in Northeast Minneapolis, which specializes in health care. The good news: that's starting to change. There's a growing awareness among insiders that health care lags behind other industries when it comes to providing a high-quality customer experience. And with patients starting to play a more active role in where their health care dollars go, there's an effort underway to make some consumer-centric changes. Around the Twin Cities, a new wave of creative design, from architecture to technology, is aiming to improve the patient experience in healthcare.

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