Chapter 5 104 Introduction Health systems are experiencing a progressive imbalance between available resources and increasing needs. The world population is growing, the incidence of chronic diseases rising, and the funds allocated to healthcare are limited.[1], [2] Calls to provide optimized, individualised, and person-centred care are growing. Addressing these competing needs and complex problems, requires novel and creative approaches for the development of healthcare solutions. Design approaches to healthcare promise to aid the development of innovative, effective and person-centred solutions to health challenges, supporting the realisation of a future for healthcare that is preventative, personalised and participatory. [3], [4] Different medical disciplines are increasingly applying human-centred design (HCD) for a range of complex questions, from process optimization to product design and social innovation.[5]–[7] HCD is often described as an iterative, collaborative and people-centred approach for designing products, services and systems and is argued to be particularly well-suited for solving complex challenges.[8] In recent years, a growing number of healthcare professionals have applied HCD to develop person-centred healthcare solutions in collaboration with patients.[9] For example, the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at Mayo Clinic used HCD to develop a new prenatal care model, designed to de-medicalise the healthy pregnancy experience.[10] By enabling women to meaningfully participate in the process through the use of self-measurement tools, their levels of engagement, sense of control, confidence and reassurance significantly increased. Another example is a nurse-led quality improvement project at Kaiser Permanente Northern California. HCD principles were employed for a patient-centred approach to improve inpatient pain management. The experiences of frontline nurses, patients and managers were collected, evaluated, and applied to improve the care experience of patients as well as the work experience of care providers.[11] The application of HCD beyond the design sector and its adoption within health research is, however, still in its infancy.[4], [12] The number of HCD studies that describe a full project cycle is limited, and even fewer publications focus on the evaluation of research projects that employed HCD.[13] A recent scoping review on the application of HCD in global health provided a first overview of its application and health outcomes in public health. The review concluded that increased methodological rigor in the application and reporting of HCD is needed to allow for more acceptance and integration of design practices into research and development.[13], [14] However, currently there is no integral collection of HCD approaches and methods used for the development of health innovations. We performed the present review to fill this gap.
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