Delphine Huang and Gyles Morrison on IDEO, Health Design, and Clinical Ux

Health design thinking uses play and experimentation rather than a rigid methodology. It draws on interviews, observations, diagrams, storytelling, physical models, and role playing; design teams focus not on technology but on problems faced by patients and clinicians. 

Healthcare UX, then, is about the experiences people have with healthcare technology and services. A Healthcare UX designer’s job is to optimise the usability, accessibility and pleasure of healthcare technology and services. Remember, the experiences cannot be guaranteed, but they can be influenced. Clinical UX, a niche within Healthcare UX focused on the experiences clinicians and their patients have with healthcare technology and services.

Dr. Delphine Huang is a medical director at IDEO Health. She works closely with design teams to bring impactful and innovative ideas to life. Her projects span from health products, services, systems and strategy design. She is also a practicing emergency medicine physician and loves hiking the California coast, finding the perfect avocado, and continuously learning from her kids.

Dr Gyles Morrison is a Clinical UX Strategist with a 10 year history in healthcare. Starting as a doctor in the UK, he now works internationally, helping UX professionals and healthcare companies make products and services that are valued by clinicians and patients. His areas of interest are digital therapeutics, healthcare behaviour change, UX maturity and professional development.

             
https://drgylesmorrison.medium.com/what-is-healthcare-ux-and-why-is-it-so-important-be21b415e681

Health design solutions to improve the care of sickle cell patients with vaso-occlusive crisis in the emergency department

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am5jIA7xKJU

https://drgylesmorrison.medium.com/how-to-learn-clinical-ux-through-mixed-learning-fbf147a42875

Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

design, people, Gyles, clinician, healthcare, IDEO, health, ux, moments, patients, thinking, resistance, therapeutics, clinical, digital, working, Delphine, opportunities, shared, projects

SPEAKERS

Resa Lewiss, Delphine Huang, Gyles Morrison

Resa Lewiss  01:12

Hi, audience. Thanks so much for joining me. And we're talking about a favorite topic, health design and user experience by two guests or subject matter experts in after balancing a few calendars, a few continents and a few time zones. Here we are. Dr. Delphine Huang is a medical director at IDEO health. She works closely with design teams to bring impactful and innovative ideas to life. She's a practicing emergency physician at San Francisco General in San Francisco, and her projects span from health products, services, systems and strategy design. Dr. Gyles Morrison is a clinical UX strategist. He has a 10 year history in healthcare, and he started as a physician in the UK, yes, the United Kingdom. He now works internationally helping UX professionals and healthcare companies make products and services that are evaluated by clinicians and patients. So each of these physician health designers have websites and have lots of projects. I first met Delphine, when I was reading about design and Health Design, and the work of IDEO. They have some really interesting products, looking at diabetes, looking at breast pumps, looking at artificial intelligence, I first came across Gyles, when we were working on a piece together, he ultimately published this in the European Journal of Emergency Medicine in 2021. He talked about an app for the treatment, the Health Design, and patient centered treatment of sickle cell patients in the emergency department. So before the episode get started, we actually were talking a bit about design. And each of them were sharing when they first realized they were thinking like a design or how they implement design in their daily lives. And in both of their cases, they talked about taking care of patients in their clinical environments. Delfina actually added that she realizes in having two young children, she actually is designing on a daily basis. Okay, let's get to the conversation. What strikes me from what both of you have shared is because I know from working in healthcare is there's a lot of resistance. There's a lot embedded in tradition. Too many times we hear well, this is the way we've always done things. So I am sure that you are used to not just the resistance of human nature and people, but specifically the resistances within healthcare. So I'm wondering if you can share for audience members that really trying to wrap their head around this concept of design, where perhaps there's been a resistance, maybe from a patient, maybe from the healthcare team, maybe from the institution, maybe from the built environment, and how you worked through that resistance. Delphine?

 

Delphine Huang  04:03

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, like whoever you're working with, whether it's a client or a patient, at the end of the gate, the two are also human. Right. So I think there is a, you know, when we talk about design, we talk about being empathetic, putting ourselves into their shoes. And so when you hit these moments of resistance, it's actually taking a time to slow down and actually understand, like, what is driving that? That thought process for that individual. And so, you know, a lot of love and work, I would say in design, there is the actual thing that you're trying to build or design for app or medical device, but it's also about aligning your lining, what could be multiple stakeholders also that are involved in this and so, you know, I think when you have this moment where it feels more I would maybe she A different resistance to feeling, maybe a moment of tension is to actually take a moment to be like, Okay, how can we better understand this moment tension, because within that, you might actually find the path of clarity that you need in order to then move something forward to design something forward. So an example of this would be like, you know, when we're talking to hospital administration, a lot of them are indoctrinated, or come from the theory of like, you know, LEAN improvements, or Sigma Six. And there are a lot of parallels actually, with that with design, I actually think they actually complement each other really well. And so it's about thinking about like, actually, how do you then speak their language? How do you bring in moments that there they are accustomed to and integrating that in order to be like, well, actually, and how do we elevate them through those means the principles of design, great,

 

Resa Lewiss  05:56

Gyles, what came to mind?

 

Gyles Morrison  05:58

So this is really advice, I would offer not just in healthcare as a way to overcome that resistance. But anytime you're facing resistance from people, I'm not a parent yet, but I've been around a lot of young children, or someone who, for whatever reason is against you. And I think it's that whole advice, the general advice that you would get from David Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People comes to mind. And the first big take home for that is to genuinely be interested in other people, which is something we can take for granted when we're talking about friends and family. But when you genuinely care about someone else's interests, it means that you start trying to read between the lines, and whenever there's doubt to ask explicitly, but over time, because you've built a relationship with that person, you instinctively start doing what's right for them, like my wife doesn't have to ask for peppermint tea in the morning, I just notice what she's gonna want, not just from tradition, but I can sense this is probably what she's gonna want right about now. And I think this can be applied very quickly, even when you are dealing with a stranger. Just having that first genuine interest in seeing how you can help that person, which then should motivate you should guide you to be asking the right questions and observing as well, because especially in design, a lot of what we determine the requirements or satisfy a user's needs, doesn't come from what the user tells us, it can often come from what the user shows us, or better still, what we learn from what the user isn't doing or what they can't do. So it's having that inquiring mind, which still first comes from genuine care about this person's interests. So I found that always worked really, really well in healthcare, I think as well, as a doctor dealing with clinical UX and design and is genuine working in digital health. Being a clinician myself is kind of like a superpower, you kind of get a power up, where when you are speaking to fellow clinicians, and you make it very clear from the outset, you're part of the solution to their problem that you're here to help. And you understand generally, even if you've never worked with them in their department, even in their country, generally, because your clinician like them, that they can trust you and that you're going to understand them because you've got a shared language, shared experiences. And so actually, the easiest conversations I've had in digital health, and clinical UX has always been with fellow doctors, more so than anybody else, followed by all other allied health care professionals, and actually is most difficult at times working with non clinicians, who have a very strong opinion about how things should be done. So again, I have to genuinely care for their interests. Is it money that's motivating them? Is it success of the project that's motivating them? And then see, how does that tie back to what I have to do in my job? What is it linked back to my agenda, and then have that common ground and make sure both of us are happy state communicating about our needs, and then that normally leads to success, it breaks down the wall that people can have, or resistance and build that bridge to connect to so that you can walk across and get stuff done?

 

Resa Lewiss  09:28

Thanks, I really like that reframe, rather than resistance perhaps consider it tension, which can be both positive and it does not necessarily have to connote negative. So in the show notes, the audience will be able to read about your respective work your project, Delphi, and I spent quite a bit of time going through your website reading about your projects. And, you know, most interestingly is your role when you're not an emergency physician at SF general is you are a medical director for IDEO some Audience members may not know about audio. And so I'm wondering if you can share a bit about the company, your role. And can you can you let us know what are you working on right now? Yeah,

 

Delphine Huang  10:11

Sure. So IDEO is a global design consultancy firm. And we are most like when most people think of IDEO, they think of, you know, products such as Oxo or Apple, I was involved in designing the first Apple mouse, for example. But over the years, besides doing physical products, we also have expanded our services and do a majority of our work in digital experience. And also think about new ventures or new opportunities. So, a lot of times organizations come to us because they have some big question that they're trying to solve. And they're looking for a creative or innovative way to be able to do that. And so, you know, IDEO is a multidisciplinary organization where we were, I think, where our strengths lie, is that we have folks that are spanning from interaction designers, to design researchers, to business designers, to someone like me, who's a clinician, to data scientist engineers, and we believe actually, the collective mind is a lot stronger than the individual mind. And so I think, with that, you know, we are a lot of times given a challenge, and from there, able to explore new avenues that perhaps haven't been thought of yet. In terms of my role, so I am one of the medical directors in our health domain. And my role primarily is to bring in the, the, the perspective of the healthcare ecosystem, and provide that lens of perhaps the different stakeholders that might be a play and the different levers that might be in play when trying to design. And so sometimes I think I think of myself a bit of like, I'm the gut check, of, you know, we can dream all these different different solutions out there. But you know, at the same time, we also have to think about the pragmatism of it, as well, as you know, what is our current state of, you know, our healthcare system. So there's a little bit of my role in terms of projects, and current, I most recently finished a project related to home care services. And I think that this was a you know, in COVID times, you know, this is an area ripe for innovation, you know, we're seeing a lot of movement, healthcare, thinking about what the outside of hospital experience could be like. And especially at home, in our current pandemic. So, you know, I think that, you know, the that this is an area that could be the has a lot of opportunities, because it's actually a lot of patients and families that need, you know, about, I think it's like 70% of patients who use home services or Medicaid beneficiaries. And we actually do see a lot of racial disparities, elder disparities when it comes to outcome and quality of care. So given the one on one nature of home care, I think there are opportunities, one of the things that we explored was, you know, I think they, the key to there a few things that we learned along the way was one, how do we like design and integrate tools, not just for the patient, but actually for the care provider? And what are those opportunities of community interacting patients, even when that provider is not with the patient? So you can build that trust and psychological safety? And second, thinking about how can we design delightful and interactive moments for patients who have a long road of recovery? And so thinking about what is that moments of being able to share progress and build positive feedback so that people are engaged in taking care of their health? So I think, you know, these are some of the projects that we work on. And this is just an example, where design I think, has a lot of can have a lot of tools that can help individuals think through how we can improve a particular situation health.

 

Resa Lewiss  14:11

Yeah, Gyles I want to get to you about your current work, but I want to first dovetail off Delphine something you shared about access, equity, health disparities, and sort of trying to raise the level of standard that everybody is getting the same care and particularly Health Design, I think is having its moment because of COVID because of and we can talk about the US and Gyles welcome your examples from the UK and Germany. You know, it basically pulled a scab off of the racial inequities, the racism throughout healthcare, in terms of patients and even in terms of health care trainees, but for you know, for the sake of argument here, we're talking about patients the despair The racial ethnic disparities and the racism. So in, as I said, health design, I think is having its moment. And I would wonder, with your role with IDEO, how have you seen that manifest? Are you just bananas, busy with many, many projects, and many, many consultations, you know, what's been coming your way because of the pandemic?

 

Delphine Huang 15:22

Yeah, I mean, I think when it comes to thinking about equity and thinking about health equity, specifically, IDEO, along with many other organizations that we're actually seeing now are grappling with, how do we how do we, as an organization, as a health care system in the US address, some of the some of the disparities that have really been they're always there, but now really exacerbated and highlighted. And during COVID, and in some ways, there's an awareness that we there, where's not even that imperative that we address these issues. And so I think that design itself really has a role to play in that kind of all the things that we've kind of talked about, of why design is a good can be helpful in these scenarios is that, you know, thinking about how we can in a moment where, you know, COVID has really highlighted these gaps in health care, it also has been an opportunity to really bring out Creative Innovations about how health care can be delivered and to whom we're really delivering it. So I think there are these moments where I think thinking about how both the merging of technology, human centered design, and healthcare come together, are at play right now. And I think we're seeing that across all organ, a lot of organizations out there and how they're approaching their work. There's a piece of organizations being wanting to be introspective about their own journey when it comes to equity at this point,

 

Resa Lewiss  16:53

Gyles, feel free to jump on that and update us on what you're working on right now. Yes, so

 

Gyles Morrison 16:59

I primarily focus on either working independently as a clinical UX strategist. So I primarily work on products in the digital therapeutic space. So any evidence base digital tool that can prevent, manage or treat disease, this can be disease anywhere in the world, on any disease, really. But what I love about that work is that you're suddenly moving the power more towards the individual patient to take more control over their health, because they're in a position to record their data most of the time and digital therapeutics and get feedback on their health in real time, within a forms them of what sort of options that they have to improve their health, or even reassure them if they had any previous concerns, which then feeds into any new treatment plans or seeing their primary care physician, so on and so forth. And what I love about this is that a lot of the issues that we face with health inequalities can be easily overcome through the more encouraged use, encouraged development and use of digital therapeutics. So you know, depending on the statistics that you look at, it can be argued that actually, people are more likely to have access to a mobile phone, then immediate healthcare services. You know, even if it's the back in the day, Nokia 9210, with the snake game that people might remember from the 90s, even those devices still can provide a very sophisticated offering to you. So the example I like to give is M-Pesa which is commonly used across Africa, particularly East Africa, which is a completely digital service to manage your money. So you can access your bank account, just through USSD, which is similar to SMS, but it's that hash, hash key and then few digit stuff that you do in your phone, which then gives you access to your ability to not only draw money as cash from an appropriate store, but for you to even send money to other people. Let's think if that instead of having financial data had medical data, you can give even homeless people the ability to own their own health data when they have a mobile phone because many homeless people, even in very deprived parts of the world have a mobile phone. And this is one of the reasons why I love working in digital therapeutics. As I said before, it can bring that shift of power more towards an individual. So anybody who needs healthcare services at some point is going to have to interact with a professional pharmacist or doctor so on and so forth. But there's many medical problems that we have or medical questions that we have, which can be easily solved on someone's own like we've seen this We've encouraged people to, you know, Google stuff, which isn't always so useful because it doesn't take into full consideration the realities of someone's lived experience and their personal health needs. But people are trying to help themselves. But we don't really have a sophisticated suite of tools and technologies to really allow people to do this properly. So that's why I like focusing on the digital therapeutics, because when we do that, right, we will be able to serve underserved people much more with language barriers. Even confidence with using technology to improve their health, we started to empower these populations. And when we satisfy their needs, everybody else who can take modern technology for granted, their needs are satisfied as well.

 

Resa Lewiss  20:52

Do you want to tell the audience briefly about your online course your clinical UX course? Yes. So

 

Gyles Morrison 20:57

the clinical UX course, he goes into his second year in January of 2022. So the course is designed to help anybody whether they are new to UX, or experienced in UX, perhaps they've done a recent bootcamp in UX design, or they've even been in UX for 10 years or more, to gain that additional skills, knowledge and experience on working in clinical UX. So how can you change your profession and go into this field, or have it as another string to your bow, so we had nine students graduate this year in 2021. And this is students all over the world, doctors, paramedic psychologists, UX professionals, new and old. And they've loved it. I'm biased, because I taught them. But the feedback has been very, very positive. And students have been able to even get jobs whilst taking the course, because the whole course is taught part time. So it's specifically designed to help people who's in full time education or full time employment, to spend a couple of hours a week on the course, if they're already in digital health or healthcare in general, they can base their coursework on what they do in the day job, or they spend a couple more hours Additionally, in the week, if they're outside of healthcare currently. But it's really to provide people with that experience, and a group of like-minded people globally, who are really passionate about making a difference in health care, food design.

 

Resa Lewiss  22:32

Great. I want to give each of you the opportunity to ask each other questions. Delphone, you want to start?

 

Delphine Huang  22:39

Sure, I would love to hear more about you teaching about clinical UX. Actually, I'm curious if you know, whether whether things are moments where you see learners or that are taking on this endeavor of clinical UX. moments for them to what are the moments where it's like an aha moment for them? Yeah, yeah.

 

Gyles Morrison 23:08

So the most common aha moment, regardless of someone being a clinician or not, is when it's revealed to them the crazy similarities between diagnosing patients and working as a designer, the whole process of there is a problem. So you investigate it. And through your investigations, you might start having ideas of what the solution could be your treatment plan. And so you give it to treatment, but then you still do a check to see you know, you know, an evaluation, further blood test, whatever the investigation that is required, and even still be saved in his life. So here's the treatment, we expect you to get better, but it'd be any problems, come back and see me the same thing you should be doing in design, someone comes with a brief, you gather as much information as possible. And you go through that cycle of understanding the problem, as well as possible, narrowing down to the right problems to solve, exploring potential solutions, testing out improving, and then making sure that if, after someone's been given a solution, they need to make any changes, they can come back to you. And so when conditions in particular, doctors realize that they're like, Wow, I get this, and I care about this. It's, it's not so hard to do is like as much as I need to learn new skills. It's that mindset change that people fit they need to go through as clinicians, we say don't they don't need to change the mindset. The only thing about the mindset that needs to change is to realize that you won't just be now using your medical degree and experiences, there's going to be some additional knowledge you're going to have to have, but otherwise you're in a good place to solve problems in healthcare as a design if you come from a clinical background. And then when the non designers I'm sorry, the designers realize this when the UX to start understanding this as well. They like I now see how Ready got such a common ground with clinicians, I can see how I can start a conversation with them and get them on my side because we've got this shared experience, even if it's seems to be different industries and different problems that's been solved. So that's perhaps the best aha moment that I see. amongst the students. The other one is when they realize how much they can earn, when they stay. That's another one that what okay, I definitely, I really like this whole clinical UX thing. Let's let's go for it, then. Yeah.

 

Resa Lewiss  25:34

Gyles, what do you want to ask? Delphine?

 

Gyles Morrison 25:37

Um, I'm really keen to know, what advice would you offer your younger self? Because I'm assuming that you weren't involved with design, before medical school? And if you didn't know about design, then would that have changed your your path in life?

 

Delphine Huang 26:03

Um, good question. Um, I don't think it would necessarily have changed the path, per se, I think that, at the heart of it, I'm still physician, and I still love the art of medicine. I think that, though, when I, you know, when I think back to folks have come to me and be like, you know, how do I get started on a journey similar to yours, I would say that, that, you know, the path at the end of the day is not clear. Because in medicine, you always have, you kind of have this trajectory that you go on, you go through medical school, and then go to residency become attending. And that path is very clear. But when I think for all of us out here on the call is that is that you have to forge your own path at the end of the day, but that you should take the opportunities as they come because you never know where it will lead you. And it's whether or not it's, you know, helping with a startup just help sit through their UX experience, and you're doing it as maybe something you do as a med student, or going to conferences and meeting different people in the industry, you start hearing some of their pain points, and what they may be struggling with, because a lot of those folks don't have experience in health care, and don't even have a weight of the lens to be able to get it. And so that can be you, right. And so I always tell folks, you know, use the opportunities as you especially as you're going through training, to one learn about the pain points of the industry, but then also learn the pain points of your hospital. Prior to coming out of prior to coming to IDEO. And prior, I had done a fellowship at Stanford called Biodesign. I had never thought about you have this physical product, let's say, let's say a ventilation machine. And then I never thought about who makes that machine? What goes into the design of it. What is components that need to be in there? What is the supply chain from being built in a manufacturer all the way with regulation, with the delivery to and training of an individual to use it, each of those steps, as someone who's early in it, who's working at the hospital had the opportunity to learn and that knowledge is so useful to somebody else in the industry? So I would say that those are the those are the things I would tell folks as they're thinking about either whether it's you know, doing something part time or making the jump fully into industry, that if you're a clinician, you can you can learn those moments and bring that knowledge to others.

 

Resa Lewiss  28:59

I know I say this every week, what a great conversation. But seriously, what a great conversation. I think it's obvious to you audience how much Delphine Gyles and I love speaking with each other and love the topic of health design and user experience. Delphine shared that this may have been one of her first podcast recordings, and I'm so glad and feel so lucky to be able to amplify her amplify her leadership as a health designer, and amplify her work. As an ideal Medical Director. Gyles and Delphine are people to watch in the health design and user experience space. You audience have a role in health design, you are designers. Think about your health. Think about health care. Think about health care that can better serve society. See you next week. The visible Voices Podcast amplifies voices both known and unknown, discussing topics of healthcare equity and current trends. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts. It helps other people find the show. You can listen on whatever platform you subscribe to podcasts. Our team includes Stacy Gatlin and Dr. Giuliano deport you. If you're interested in sponsoring an episode, please contact me resa@visiblevoicespodcast.com. I'm based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and I'm on Twitter @ResaELewiss. Thank you so much for listening and as always, to be continued