The Best Solution is a Human Solution
“I attended a Hacking Health event. Hacking Health is where people from diverse groups are brought together to work on innovate solutions to health care problems.?
Most of the solutions created at Hacking Health events are based in technology and digital health.
As the mom of a disabled kid, I pitched the problem of wayfinding to the audience of students, clinicians, technology people and designers. My wayfinding problem was a simple one. It was about Aaron and me getting lost in the hospital. I had only a minute to share my pitch in front of a packed auditorium. The fact I survived this brief but stressful speaking engagement was itself a miracle.
A Wayfinding Team took up my cause. They ended up winning a Hacking Health Award for innovation after two days of intensive design work.?
Their proposal was not a shiny new app to help patients navigate the hospital corridors, but for a people-powered solution instead. Their answer was to engage hospital volunteers to escort patients to their destinations in the hospital.?
This was true universal design in action, for more patients would be served by a real person taking them to their appointments than they would through a downloaded app.
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In essence, the Wayfinding Team hacked Hacking Health with a human solution at a technology event.?
I believe that building a human solution is often much harder than building an app. While the relationship part of health care is sometimes dismissed by calling it soft, the soft stuff is what matters to me.?
Health care is about my relationship between me and my clinician, not me and my data.
How many applications are created by researchers and then never used by patients or families?? While email and social media should serve as another way to communicate and connect people together, do we really need another app??
Or, as the Hacking Health team showed us, do we instead need a real live person to show us the way??
Technology can help but it is not the only solution to what ails us.” - Bird's Eye View
Transforming Ideas into Products
6 个月The best solution is a human solution indeed, Sue. I like to use your example to illustrate why high-tech is not the answer in many cases in my presentations on product development to students when you take justice, equity, diversity and inclusion as part of product requirements.