Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
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The allocation of resources is mainly done at a system level by setting<br />
up rules that ensure appropriate thresholds, while the assessment of treatment<br />
needs is done at clinics by healthcare staff. In<strong>for</strong>mation technology<br />
(IT) has been seen as a means <strong>for</strong> nurses and doctors to provide the best<br />
care possible while acting within the frames set by the administration.<br />
However, the complexity of the existing IT systems, paired with the challenging<br />
procedures of public requests <strong>for</strong> tenders <strong>for</strong> municipal investments,<br />
have resulted in a situation where the present systems seem to<br />
have put the burden of additional desk work on healthcare professionals<br />
rather than freeing more time <strong>for</strong> patient care. In addition, innovations<br />
are often restricted to what the available infrastructure and software technology<br />
can accommodate within the smallest common denominator of<br />
technical feasibility, instead of truly addressing end-user needs. Valuable<br />
data that could help make the system more efficient remains unused. At<br />
the same time, healthcare units have refined their own local workflows<br />
to compensate <strong>for</strong> the IT shortcomings – nurses and doctors are required<br />
to adjust their work to the IT limitations instead of the technology being<br />
adjustable to their needs.<br />
This chapter describes three student projects carried out with Helsinki<br />
Health Care Centre (HHCC) that address the future of health IT. The starting<br />
point <strong>for</strong> our work was to search <strong>for</strong> design solutions based on the<br />
needs of both healthcare providers and citizens. We started from desirable<br />
outcomes without being too restricted by the potential feasibility of their<br />
implementation into the existing IT infrastructure. Nonetheless, it was part<br />
of the brief to have the concepts grounded in the realities of the public<br />
health sector and its systems. There<strong>for</strong>e, each future health IT project had<br />
a concrete starting point within on-going developments at HHCC and the<br />
solutions proposed could be implemented today with little to medium ef<strong>for</strong>t.<br />
126 · Reducing social distance through co-design