Improving the patient experience with Rembrandt

Human-centered design can improve the patient experience while positively impacting a hospital’s clinical, operational and financial performance.

Architecture professor Roger Ulrich made a groundbreaking discovery in 1984. He showed that surgical patients in hospital rooms with a view of nature had fewer complications, needed less pain medication and were discharged earlier than patients who gazed out onto the brick wall of a facing building. Subsequent research has strengthened this idea that well-designed environments – in the broadest sense – have a positive impact on patient outcomes1.

This ties in perfectly with Philips’ approach to healthcare. For decades we have been looking at - sometimes radical - ways of improving the entire experience, whether during diagnosis, treatment or recovery, for both patients and the staff caring for them. Central to this is our collaborative, human-centered design thinking. We believe the best results always come from involving views and input from many diverse sources. When you combine this ‘Cocreative’ philosophy with classical design skills, as well as a natural inquisitiveness that means constantly challenging, probing and questioning, then more often than not the end result will resonate with the people it is intended for.

Classic Dutch art in the exam room

A recent example of this is ‘Dutch Masters’, a new theme for Ambient Experience, which we launched at the RSNA healthcare tradeshow last month. During development we worked in partnership with many different experts including Amsterdam’s world-famous Rijksmuseum, whose curator chose nine serene Dutch landscapes to use in the 45-minute-long Ambient Experience animation. The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra selected and then played suitable passages of classical music, which accompanies the images.

If you’ve ever seen a serene Rembrandt landscape, you can probably imagine how it would help patients relax and shift their attention away from a hospital examination. The dramatic interplay of light and shadow in those endless Dutch skies, the simplicity and serenity in the fields and villages below… much better than the bare wall of an exam room any day. Working with such refined and high-quality images was also a source of inspiration for our interior-, architecture-, user-interface-and motion designers. They all wanted to make sure that patients and staff would experience these classic masterpieces in an elegant and intuitive way.

Helping patients relax during an MRI can reduce the need for rescans

The Amsterdam Medical Center is piloting Dutch Masters, while the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam will gather insights into the specific impact it has for both patients and staff. At the Amsterdam Medical Center, it is being implemented together with Ambient Experience in-bore Connect.

This was specifically developed to lower anxiety during MRI scans. MRI is excellent for imaging soft tissue, but the scanning process typically take much longer than X-ray examinations, are louder, and usually require sliding patients into a narrow tube inside the machine, known as the bore. This can make them feel claustrophobic, anxious and jumpy, which regularly affects exam results. According to the Journal of American College Radiology, patient motion disrupts up to 42% of MR exams, which equates to losses upwards of $140,000 per year, per imaging machine.

With in-bore Connect, patients inside an MR machine can still enjoy an immersive sensory experience that includes dynamic lighting, projection and sound. It was quite a design challenge: all MR machines create an incredibly powerful magnetic field, and therefore you are limited in the materials that you can use. Nonetheless we made it possible, and this month we’ve celebrated the 250th installation of this unique solution.

The Herlev Getofte University Hospital in Denmark implemented its in 2015, and a survey conducted by Dr. Michael Christian Nemery, neurologist and chairman of the radiology department, revealed a 70% reduction in re-scans2. This obviously has a major influence on the utilization of the machine and also the reimbursement. The same study showed that 84% of patients felt calmer.

Connecting to nature: one of the secrets of reaching 100

The effect of nature on our well-being and longevity, in a wider context than the hospital environment, is being taken increasingly seriously. For example, shinrin-yoku, which literally means ‘forest bathing’ (taking a relaxed walk in a soothing natural environment), has become a key component of preventive healthcare and healing in Japan. It’s also backed up by plenty of scientific studies.

Meanwhile ‘Blue zones’ – areas of the world in which the inhabitants have a much-higher-than-average chance of reaching 100 – have been analyzed to see if there are secrets that can be passed on to the rest of us. It’s been shown that, while lifestyle, diet and genetics play a role in these zones, so does the proximity to, and being in harmony with, the natural environment.

Creating the right conditions for the ‘Sacred Hour’ after delivering a baby

As well as taking inspiration from nature, we can also learn a lot from the nature of the human body. Partnering with the Máxima Medical Center in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, we designed a project in which care is brought to the mother and newborn baby as needed, instead of moving them to separate areas of the hospital each time.

Realizing this saw our designers rethink current paradigms applied to the organization and flow of maternity and newborn care, as well as to the staff who deliver it. A prime example is the ‘Sacred Hour’. The first moments of life outside the womb are a special time when a baby and parents begin bonding. They should have the space and time to do this. Thanks to the single-patient maternity rooms we implemented, it’s now possible. And it was worth it: 94 percent of families surveyed considered the Sacred Hour to be positive. 

A holistic approach to improving the patient experience

We’re always exploring different ways of optimizing the patient experience. For example, by investigating how personalized streaming music playlists could improve the feeling of mental well-being for each individual. Through wall projections of animated tree branches and blossoms, linked to contractions and dilation, to help expectant mothers in labor. Or by re-establishing natural rhythms for people who have to stay in hospital for longer periods of time; our HealWell mimics natural light inside hospital rooms, synchronizing to the human circadian rhythm so patients can sleep better, feel happier and heal faster.

Better experiences for all

Our designers also address issues that often get overlooked but can nonetheless play a role in how a patient recovers, like unnecessary clutter in a room, or excessive noise from nearby staff talking too loudly about personal matters. We discovered that something as simple as having doctors sitting rather than standing when talking to a patient can have a huge impact on how information is received and understood. We therefore also carry out analysis and help train staff so they too can contribute to providing the optimum experience for patients.

All of these initiatives and explorations are examples of how we see care evolving. Through critically analyzing existing processes, unearthing deep insights into what people are really looking for and then applying co-creation together with deeply human-focused design, we believe we can create better experiences for patients and caregivers, while improving the effectiveness of healthcare delivery.

Do you take a human-centered approach to design in your organization? How do you create additional value by putting the user at the heart of the experiences you offer?

References:

1. Ulrich RS, Simons RF, Losito BD, et al. (1991). "Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments". Journal of environmental psychology. 11 (3): 201–230

2. FieldStrength – Special issue ISMRM 2015