Designing digital patient experiences: The digital health design framework (September 2024)

Summary

Digital health (DH) brings considerable benefits, but it comes with potential risks. Human Factors (HF) play a critical role in providing high-quality and acceptable DH solutions. Consultation with designers is crucial for reflecting on and improving current DH design practices. Authors of this study published in Applied Ergonomics, investigated the general DH design processes, challenges, and corresponding strategies that can improve the digital patient experience (PEx).

Highlights:

• Key design phases in the digital healthcare industry are preparation, problem thinking, problem solving, and implementation.
• At an abstract level, design processes are similar across domains, but the emphasis on specific design phases is different.
• Contextual, practical, managerial, and commercial challenges often due to differences between disciplines and stakeholders.
• Design challenges and strategies often co-exist and represent two sides of the same coin.
• Stakeholder groups common to the digital health design process are clients, designers, domain experts, and end users.
• Clients, as decision-makers, often value clinical outcomes and business achievements more than user experiences.