Our Process
Our four pillars shape our approach to solving healthcare challenges.
Healthcare Design Research
Design research is the heart of the value we bring to healthcare. We are uniquely situated within the Mass General Brigham health system to leverage this vital skillset.
Prototyping
Prototyping is where we iterate our hypotheses from design research into tangible interventions. It is a fluid stage of the process requiring true collaboration with frontline providers and patients.
Practical Implementation Support
Our outputs from prototyping will always be interventions capable of being implemented. We do not do the actual implementation; that is for the frontline providers to integrate into their workflows, but we absolutely provide practical implementation support to ensure frontline providers and staff understand the intended value of an intervention and how to integrate it into workflows to test that hypothesis.
Measurement & Impact
We measure the impact of our innovation to provide validation and future learnings for further development. If healthcare design is where an idea started in abstract, this is where we prove the impact.
Our pillars shape our process.
Healthcare Design Research
Healthcare design research is the heart of the value we bring to healthcare. We are uniquely situated within the Mass General Brigham health system to leverage this vital skillset. Importantly, all of our work starts with understanding the problem and how this problem is perceived by various stakeholders. This step is critical in the design-thinking process to ensure the solution designed is solving for a real need and in a way that will be adopted by stakeholders. Critically, we bring the voice of the customer into product design through our healthcare design research.
“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
—Albert Einstein
Prototyping
We translate the stakeholder and end-user needs collected in our design research into product specifications to create an initial low-fidelity prototype which end-users and stakeholders can see, touch and feel. We are solutions agnostic as long as the solution is solving for the needs identified in the design research phase. We seek continued feedback and insight from the MGB community to further refine and iterate the prototype, ultimately turning it into a product ready for testing.
Practical Implementation Support
We work closely with the frontline providers and staff who will be testing the solution to integrate the solution into existing workflows and/or help identify areas where workflows may need to be redesigned to accommodate the solution. We co-create this implementation plan with an eye towards identifying baseline data and ways to measure impact.
Measurement & Impact
Our work is disciplined experimentation followed by rigorous evaluation. As a learning organization, we aim to demonstrate, with data, both the social and financial benefits of solutions to providers, staff and patients to make healthcare more user-friendly. Data helps determine which projects should progress, pivot, or not pursue.
Our Global Impact
4,300+
Innovators engaged
30+
Companies formed
40+
Patents filed
Within our Health System
300+
People engaged across 15+ departments
15+
Promising solutions supported
74
Net promoter score
Programs
All four pillars together constitute our design thinking methodology to engage with Mass General Brigham patients, providers, and staff. From needs identification to co-design sessions to prototyping to supporting implementation efforts, the programs below are the variety of ways we engage with our community to make healthcare more user-friendly.
iSolve
Our iSolve program is focused on our MGB frontline providers and staff who already have ideas for solving challenges they face in patient care delivery. At intervals throughout the year, we offer iSolve awards of funding and acceleration support for selected solutions. Have an idea to improve patient care at MGB? Send us a message!
SheSolves
SheSolves is designed to increase the participation of women in healthcare innovation. With women representing 50% of the global population, and upwards of 75% of health caregivers globally in formal and informal roles, it’s critical to include women in the design of health solutions. Our SheSolves program aims at amplifying the voices of women to identify challenges and ensure their perspectives are included.
WeSolve
WeSolve is a collective problem-solving process that engages people from a variety of backgrounds to identify challenges in healthcare and brainstorm ways to solve them. WeSolve starts with design research and needs identification, leading to ideation sessions where participants are prompted with ‘how might we’ statements followed by co-designing early-stage solutions.
WeSolve Stupid Stuff
In partnership with the Mass General Physicians Organization (MGPO), this campaign focuses on identifying all the ‘stupid stuff’ that impedes care delivery and frustrates providers. MGH providers have submitted hundreds of challenges to date which are reviewed and triaged to stakeholders within the hospital to address.
