From: Harvard Business Review - The Four Phases of Design Thinking

I came across the following post on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network - The Conversation:

10:54 AM Thursday July 29, 2010
by Warren Berger

What can people in business learn from studying the ways successful designers solve problems and innovate? On the most basic level, they can learn to question, care, connect, and commit — four of the most important things successful designers do to achieve significant breakthroughs.
Having studied more than a hundred top designers in various fields over the past couple of years (while doing research for a book), I found that there were a few shared behaviors that seemed to be almost second nature to many designers. And these ingrained habits were intrinsically linked to the designer's ability to bring original ideas into the world as successful innovations. All of which suggests that they merit a closer look.

You can read the whole of Warren's original post, while below I have taken his focus concepts CONNECT, CARE, COMMIT and QUESTION and associated them to the care (knowledge) domains of Hodges' model. Following that there is a rationale. ...

connect	question
care	commit

Connect:Intrapersonal
Placed in the intra-interpersonal domain this is the domain of concepts, thoughts, ideas, creativity and innovation. This is the essence of Warren's reference to 'connect' -

Designers, I discovered, have a knack for synthesizing--for taking existing elements or ideas and mashing them together in fresh new ways.

The INTERPERSONAL links page also highlights other conceptual 'inhabitants' here; in particular knowledge management, the semantic web and psychology. If analysis and reduction is the outcome of the hard sciences, then here as Warren writes is synthesis, integration and invention. We can see how self-belief is critical to many innovators who pursue their dreams regardless of rebuffs by the establishment, to whom - within the health career model - they are also diametrically opposed.

Question:Sciences
The ability to question lie at the heart of human activity, and although thought and mind are represented in the interpersonal domain, questions also exemplify the output of human reasoning powers in the SCIENCES. Evidence based care depends on an ongoing process-ion of questions that drive research. Problem solving with its iterative sequence of assess (question), plan, action, evaluation (question). The health career model reminds us though of the need to consider not only quantity, logic and objective measures, but the role of qualitative research and methods.

Care:Sociology
Seeing Warren's inclusion of 'care' drew me to his post. Here he concludes:

Focus groups and questionnaires don't cut it; designers know that you must care enough to actually be present in people's lives.

Health and (social!) care are social activities. Our students are socialised into the professions and disciplines as they pursue their careers. Our work depends on the effectiveness of human communication and relationships. You can read about 'counselling' and only get so far; ultimately health care is experiential. It is something to be practised.

Commit:POLITICAL
Warren deals with the way designer's view risk and committing early to an idea and the project that might follow. For me 'commit' and being committed has explicit political - power - connotations. So, Warren's reference to commit in the sense of producing a model or prototype and working through problems can be extended. Invention and design may be cognitive pursuits, but they are non-trivial in that they must ultimately and literally be negotiated. Being able to 'commit' needs to be sanctioned. Individuals need to be empowered, or recognise when to either proceed or seek advice and guidance. Furthermore, Warren notes:

The designer's ability to "fail forward" is a particularly valuable quality in times of dynamic change. Today, many companies find themselves operating in a test-and-learn business environment that requires rapid prototyping. (?)

Perhaps the recognition in health policy of the need to balance negative and positive risk taking, self-care and personalised budgets can also be discerned in the above?

Acknowledgement:
Thanks to Warren Berger and HBR

jQuery test page - Pippa's H-M axis question

Pippa's query about the HUMANISTIC & MECHANISTIC axis within Hodges' model, got me thinking not only in terms of her Occupational Health Nursing context, but how can I display the questions and answers in a new way - at least for me?

For web designers this is noddy stuff, but I worked on an effort using some jQuery, plus a style sheet. The idea is to work through the questions THEN click the question to reveal / hide a response.

Time as ever has not allowed me to consult with OH professionals and their course curricula. Despite this, the pointers appear to have helped Pippa and may inform general readers.

As to the page itself, there is much more to do. Refine the code, test it across browsers and consider some additional touches - possibly rounded corners. How might this sit in Drupal? There is one CSS (javascript?) technique that I really must tackle - a gift for Hodges' model: opacity and layers.
I will be checking what Drupal can do from an educational perspective and contrast this with tools like Moodle.

Global Patient Centricity - Global Frameworks for Health Q+A c/o Ryan Robertson

In my inbox today was a question from Ryan Robertson sent through LinkedIn. Many thanks Ryan for the question and the go-ahead for the post here:

Question Details:
--------------------
Global Patient Centricity

If we are one of the most dominant nations (UK) based on OUR ability to provide Total Patient Care, considering we run the Public Sector National Programme for IT/Connecting for Health, largest Public Sector programme in the world to be implemented, then why have we not come together as an International consortium to better enhance Global Patient Centricity?

Last month I started a thread on global health, now Ryan's timely question has helped me think beyond butterflies:

Hi Ryan

My response would be that yes the horses are in the starting gate, but globally the gate is staggered and not just to allow for the curvature of the Earth.

Much of what follows you may have figured already of course....

The staggered gates is a reason to do this as much as a barrier. Initiatives-tools like GAPMINDER show the great variation in infrastructure, finance and supplier-customer proximity (to be socio-technical - you can't do this remotely), national politics and priorities (the government - SA Aids?), demographics - 'national' priorities (public involvement), information standards, intellectual property, legal frameworks, languages (one country-many languages), coding & classification (clearly there are some excellent resources already available - ICD, SNOMED...), ability to use intelligence (backend data), interface, safety[!] and so the list goes on.

There are signs of pubescent stirrings. The six billion+ humongous hum of hormones is working some real magic as in addition to WHO, UNESCO... there are various international consortia covering education, epidemiology, coding and classification - helping to bring global standards and scalability. The recent rise of funding from rich benefactors is another significant factor.

I'm working on a paper at present - socio-technical structures - and undoubtedly culture figures very large here. Relationships matter and do vary in how they are defined, so when we talk about the demographics component how do you manage the 'pick and mix' sensitively? The software would have to be Internationalised in new ways (that makes role based access look easy-peasy). Some countries comprise many distinct cultures that seek to retain their 'independence' and identity. Ethnic medicine is not just a fashion, it needs to be sustained like the environments native people inhabit.

Speaking of natives - selling the global ideal to the 'public' # is itself a fascinating question; especially given the (on-going) issue of clinical and public engagement in England.

The solutions suppliers of course (and bio-medtech industry) seek to 'add value' to their services through communications, consultancy, life-cycle management, training... They are after all corporate not social enterprises. Not all global users may be willing to 'underwrite' these extras? However, from a corporate and social responsibility perspective should the suppliers devote a (derived) percentage to support those nations at a certain (dynamic) threshold? That threshold could also be subject to 'rewards' if the government gets to grips with corruption, infrastructure, public health education, and EDUCATION... Definitions of 'government' are key here with some debate online this past week - is a benevolent dictator better than a corrupt-puppet democracy?

If time permitted I'd like to work on Hodges' model as a global framework to underpin global health. I've an embryonic global frameworks group c/o some 22nd C. thinkers and doers at Global Alliance for Nursing and Midwifery Communities of Practice (GANM), but the h2cm blog (and now Drupal) has rather taken me over. Please find below some web links to related groups. There are many others - medical, voluntary.... If you have any suggestions - I've added the h2cm POLITICAL domain links page below also.

Your question Ryan could also be related to the global citizenry movement.# Citizenry is a loaded term for (the) many, but governments need to be held to account. Economies need to be re-engineered. Would-be consumers need to be headed off at the pass (teach your children to sing NOT consume beyond their needs) to address climate change, quality of life and HEALTH FOR ALL.

For all my previous sounding on cognitive therapy and the primary-secondary care sectors, people need to leave school with a basic understanding of stress, thoughts and beliefs. Well-being needs to be the order of the day and night.

Well-being + Global Patient (Public-Citizen?) Centricity [Health Education]

= Global Personal Actors (with everyone playing their part whatever their ability)

As evidence for the staggered starting gates you could point to various nations and their need to focus on reproductive health, malaria, AIDS.... In terms of intervention and OUR notion of personal health record does the record start and end with the individual? Is there a need in some situations to focus more on the family, community? Once some equivalence is achieved then the Open Source movement may also have a look in, complementing the traditional suppliers. IMHO Hodges' model is a global framework with great potential - there are bound to be others out there across the oceans, across borders and across time.

Thanks again for asking the question Ryan, I'll do a blog post on this - do you mind if I mention you as initiating the above?

Hope this helps - there's a paper in your question!

Best regards

Peter

Image source: Attila Szegedi - Butterfly fractals