Delta Means Change
Without a doubt, the healthcare industry — like the world around us — is undergoing rapid and transformational change. One major shift is the rapid and significant rise in chronic diseases and disabilities. To combat this, the health profession will have to turn its focus to managing these diseases through early detection, improved diet, exercise and treatment therapy. But what does this mean for our healthcare environments?
As Global Director of Health, I spend my days turning over this question, exploring what it means with some of the most innovative organizations in the world. The solutions aren’t clear, but one thing is: with the changes in medical conditions and treatments, consumer expectations and technology, healthcare isn’t what it used to be.
Tackling this will be easier said than done, but the opportunities far outweigh the challenges.
Retailers have begun to take on healthcare delivery, expanding their service offerings beyond immunizations to areas once considered unimaginable. Soon, you may be as likely to receive specialty care at a Walgreens as you would at a hospital. This development has already begun to alter our perception of health and healthcare delivery — a check-up seems as easy as picking up milk.
As consumer familiarity with retail-health services increases, people will expect the more traditional organizations to keep pace. This also indicates a shift in our understanding of patient experience. App-based services have accustomed users to convenience and transparency across industries. In the future, these qualities will become just as important to patients as cost and efficacy of care. Human-centered design offers a holistic approach that can be applied to the (patient) experience of care delivery.
These experiences aren’t just rooted in retail and experience design. A wide body of cutting-edge research has proven that leveraging biophilia in design can have significant and beneficial effects on patient (and provider) satisfaction and recovery rates — not to mention lessening our impact on the environment. It’s a fundamental shift in the way we consider health and our connection to nature.
We are on the cusp of multiple paradigm shifts in health and healthcare. That’s why we created Delta, a book that is a guide for how healthcare organizations can not only embrace change, but thrive in it. It’s called ‘delta’ because the word means change. Change is not a destination, but a process. It is the in-between that lays the course to the future. And it is the only constant.
Read more Delta to explore the ideas that will become the foundation for the future landscape of health delivery.
