Leveraging service design for healthcare transformation: toward people-centered, integrated, and technology-enabled healthcare systems
ISSN: 1757-5818
Article publication date: 24 April 2020
Issue publication date: 12 November 2020
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores how service design can contribute to the evolution of health service systems, moving them toward people-centered, integrated and technology-enabled care; the paper develops a research agenda to leverage service design research for healthcare transformation.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual study starts by analyzing healthcare challenges in terms of demographic trends and economic constraints, along with the problems of lack of people-centricity, dispersion of care and slowness in incorporating emerging technologies. Then, it examines the theoretical underpinnings of service design to develop a framework for exploring how a human-centered, transformative and service systems approach can contribute to addressing healthcare challenges, with illustrative cases of service design research in healthcare being given.
Findings
The proposed framework explores how a human-centered service design approach can leverage the potential of technology and advance healthcare systems toward people-centered care; how a transformative service design approach can go beyond explanatory research of healthcare phenomena to develop innovative solutions for healthcare change and wellbeing; and how a service systems perspective can address the complexity of healthcare systems, hence moving toward integrated care.
Originality/value
This paper systematizes and develops a framework for how service design can contribute to healthcare transformation. It identifies key healthcare application areas for future service design research and pathways for advancing service design in healthcare by using new interdisciplinary bridges, methodological developments and theoretical foundations.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The research work related to the project “Recovery.Net” was funded as part of the Welfare in Action program of Cariplo Foundation (http://welfareinazione.fondazionecariplo.it). The research work related to robotic care was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska Curie grant agreement No. 642116. The research work related to the development of the Portuguese Electronic Health Record was supported by the Portuguese Ministry of Health.
Citation
Patrício, L., Sangiorgi, D., Mahr, D., Čaić, M., Kalantari, S. and Sundar, S. (2020), "Leveraging service design for healthcare transformation: toward people-centered, integrated, and technology-enabled healthcare systems", Journal of Service Management, Vol. 31 No. 5, pp. 889-909. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-11-2019-0332
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited