Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Lancaster University
Integrating evidence-based design and experience-based approaches in healthcare service design
This peer-reviewed journal paper is one of the outputs of an 18 months research, titled ‘Design for flexibility and change within healthcare providers’. This research was funded by the EPSRC Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre (HaCIRIC), a collaborative partnership between UK university-led research centres, which was established with funding from UK research councils to investigate infrastructure, change and innovation in healthcare services, with a view to improving care delivery practices.
This article questions the long lasting tradition of evidence-based design within healthcare, by suggesting the need for integration with experience-based design approaches. It discusses the application of ‘evidence based’ and ‘experience based’ approaches to the redesign of services, products and places, examining the opinions of both advocates and opponents, and the evolution of the practical application of the theories in context.
The EPSRC research into Practice Based Commissioning in healthcare demonstrated the gap between the claim that clinicians have a better understanding of patients and the medical approach to innovation relying on statistics and quantitative evaluations. The authors suggested the need to bridge the evidence-based approach with experience based design by applying design methodologies looking into patient’s experiences and life as a source for healthcare improvement.
Given the growing interest in the application and evaluation of Experience Based Design approaches in healthcare (http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/articles/patient-centred-care-project-evaluation-report) this article contextualises this approach providing a systematic comparison between evidence based and experience based design. It bridges the often antagonistic views of quantitative versus qualitative studies in health research, which makes dialogue and contribution of Service Design in this field extremely challenging.
