1. Innovation in Healthcare
Talk for MsC on Healthcare
Innovation
Imperial Business School
Simon Roberts, Ideas Bazaar
9th February 2011
2. Hello
• 1996-2000: The satellite TV and
consumer revolution in north India
• 2000-05: The UK’s first ethnographic
research consultancy
• 2005-2011: Led Intel’s European
research and design efforts on ageing
and independent living
• Now: Consulting, start-up for connected
ageing, leading older people’s strategy
for Raceonline 2012.
4. A Commitment to
Understanding
''If you want to understand
how a lion hunts, don't go to
the zoo. Go to the jungle.''
AG Lafley - CEO of Procter & Gamble
5. People not Users
“People, not users, inhabit
the world. A ‘user’ is
something that designers
create.”
Redstrom
13. Few people identify
themselves as either sick or
old. The key is to provide
technology that people
recognise as helping them
to do what they want,
rather than reminding them
that they are no longer
capable.
14. Monitoring and early
intervention are useful,
but people often are in a
state of healthy denial
about ageing and thus
may not embrace such
solutions.
15. Ageing adults want to
continue to feel useful
productive and engaged
with family and
community, without
feeling they are a burden.
16. The inability to take care
of one’s own home or
garden, to buy groceries
and prepare meals and
move about the
community are factors
which can seriously
impact an ageing person’s
ability to live the life they
desire
17. Health is defined through
interactions and
negotiations among
various people. Cultural,
social and political
systems also shape
attitudes and behaviours
related to health.
18.
19.
20. “One of the greatest challenges or losses that
we face as older adults, frankly, is not about
our health, but it’s actually about our social
network deteriorating on us, because our
friends get sick, our spouse passes away,
friends pass away, or we move”
“The new future of old age is about staying in
society...and staying very connected.”
Joseph F. Coughlin, Director of the AgeLab, MIT
23. Lack of access to
transport services
reduces opportunities
for independence and
autonomy and creates a
sense of obligation and
dependency
“I like to go to the day care centre and go
out shopping – but sometimes I feel
rushed, when my son takes me to town, as
soon as we get there he says, “How long
will you be?”
24. Transportation
initiatives emerge
from, and weave
together, a huge
variety of community
services and
resources.
“Clients can see a physiotherapist, get
their hair done, see a chiropodist…We
do 2-3 showers a day – people need
that support because otherwise they
wouldn’t be able to still live at home.”
25. Mobile lives are
sociable lives –
mobility is valued
for all it enables,
not just the
journey
“It’s nice to have someone to talk
to - put on the radio? The radio
isn’t somebody to say hello to you.
I like somebody who’s able to say
hello to me and chat to me…No-
one to talk to, day in, day out. Only
for the likes of these clubs I’d have
gone cuckoo.”
26. Transportation is a
platform that links
people to places,
people and
resources. It is both
social engine and
glue
“People need to get out and
socialise with people, get fresh
air - it keeps people alert - to
do their own shopping, do their
own business.”
27. Community transport
projects provide an
essential service to a
population who have
few opportunities for
social interaction or for
access to healthcare
and services.
29. Who are we designing
for?
Drivers
Bus Care
Businesses
Services Providers
Older
People
Men & Groups
Families Women and
The
Clubs
Internet
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36. An Intention and
Transportation Engine
Aggregation of
Transport Providers people who want to
who want travel
passengers
$£€
Service, Event,
Business, Location who
want customers, users,
clients
So, because I’m anthropologist I’m going to start, as anthropologists typically do, by creating a frame for what I want to talk about. \n\nThere are six frames that I want to invoke and for us all to have in mind as this talk progresses\n\n
Ethnography is a good way to understand the issues holistically, and get to the crux of the issues (but of course it is not the only way). To my mind, it’s value is in forcing us to think holistically, systemically and to uncover what is hidden in plain sight. If we want to create new stuff ethnography is often a good place to start. \n\n\n
1.People not Users. First, and I recognise this quote my sound rather trite or obvious, or both, let’s be sure we understand that we are talking about people – their hopes, their dreams, their problems, illness, insecurities and concerns. It’s clearly a good thing to talk about users sometimes, but from my perspective it’s best to talk about people when we’re trying to understand what problem we’re trying to address, and users when we’re getting people to help us optimise a technology or design. \n\n
Systems – it’s really important that we understand innovation (in any field) in terms of systems. That means looking at all the actors and actants, ‘studying up’ to fathom the organising logic of those who control and how they wield power and make decisions.\n\n
Getting things done. We’re all, most of the time, trying to get things done and we’re doing innovation I think its really important to think about how we can help people achieve things they’re committed to making happen – though of course we might also be trying to help them do things that they don’t currently do. In any event, I think it’s helpful to think about enabling people to get things done. \n\n
\nSustaining Change – too often I suspect that what much innovation in healthcare fails to account for is the economics of the change implied by the innovation, who implements and what the cost of implementation will be…?\n Who pays?\n Implementation\n What sustains it?\n How will it work?\n\n\n
Innovation as ‘linking’ not always inventing. We tend to think about innovation as inventing new things. I prefer to think about it as linking the previously disconnected.\n\n
Having laid out these frames I want to talk about some of the work I’ve done – some of which goes some way to demonstrating, often by their absence rather than their presence, why I think these frames are important. \n\n
I ran a significant element of Intel’s effort to understand these issues in relations to ageing. \n\nOur first step was to conduct a major programme of work to understand the experience of ageing cross culturally and to use that to determine what opportunities might exist for a company like Intel. \n\n
This work took us to 8 countries, we conducted ethnography with older people and their carers (formal and informal), conducted policy and market desk research and interviewed health and policy specialists. \n\n
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We created many output from this work, including a map of opportunities that help navigate the product and business teams around where next. \nThis work also generated a significant number of concept ideas for further evaluation. \n\nThe work also led us to identify areas where we might need to know a lot more before working on potential solutions. One of these areas was mobility – in part because we saw that a major concern for older people related to them being ‘imprisoned’ in their own homes as they age.\n\n
We created many output from this work, including a map of opportunities that help navigate the product and business teams around where next. \nThis work also generated a significant number of concept ideas for further evaluation. \n\nThe work also led us to identify areas where we might need to know a lot more before working on potential solutions. One of these areas was mobility – in part because we saw that a major concern for older people related to them being ‘imprisoned’ in their own homes as they age.\n\n
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So we configured a project in partnership with an organisation which oversees 34 projects in Ireland which provide transportation services to older people. \n\n
