Health Ecosystems
Developing new tools in the operating room
Health Care | Development Processes
Situation
Hi-tech medical equipment is an integrated part of the struggle to combat complex diseases, often under stressful conditions, in hospitals and outpatient clinics. In order to develop a new generation of one of its main products, a producer of advanced ultrasound equipment asked us to identify key areas of improvement and currently unmet needs of their main end-users: surgeons and specialist doctors. The ambition was to bridge the gap between the exact demands of the end-users and the design and functionalities of current products.
Approach
In order to fully understand the end users – their actual work and their physical work environments – we conducted ethnographic research in a range of hospital operating rooms and specialist outpatient clinics in Denmark, Germany, Austria and the US. This allowed us to map the different contexts of use and to see how a wide variety of interactions take place – not just between people and technology, but as well between members of staff and patients.
Teams comprised of both industrial designers and ethnographers carried out observations in operating rooms and clinics – before, during and after operations – and mapped the context of ultrasound usage, workflows and processes via video and still photography.
Outcome
The research and subsequent analysis revealed valuable new strategic insights and also helped prioritize and qualify assumptions previously held by the client about their end-users. The insights have been put to use and new products based on this project will launch in 2008.
Hi-tech medical equipment is an integrated part of the struggle to combat complex diseases, often under stressful conditions, in hospitals and outpatient clinics. In order to develop a new generation of one of its main products, a producer of advanced ultrasound equipment asked us to identify key areas of improvement and currently unmet needs of their main end-users: surgeons and specialist doctors. The ambition was to bridge the gap between the exact demands of the end-users and the design and functionalities of current products.
Approach
In order to fully understand the end users – their actual work and their physical work environments – we conducted ethnographic research in a range of hospital operating rooms and specialist outpatient clinics in Denmark, Germany, Austria and the US. This allowed us to map the different contexts of use and to see how a wide variety of interactions take place – not just between people and technology, but as well between members of staff and patients.
Teams comprised of both industrial designers and ethnographers carried out observations in operating rooms and clinics – before, during and after operations – and mapped the context of ultrasound usage, workflows and processes via video and still photography.
Outcome
The research and subsequent analysis revealed valuable new strategic insights and also helped prioritize and qualify assumptions previously held by the client about their end-users. The insights have been put to use and new products based on this project will launch in 2008.
