The IxCenter, IDEO and the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) have just published a new report, “Innovating with Information Therapy (Ix): Prompting Transformational Change with Safety-Net Populations.” The report represents our findings and learnings from a collaborative project between the IxCenter and IDEO with funding and guidance from CHCF, as well as input from several experts and physicians who serve safety-net populations.

The project had two primary goals:

1. Identify and illustrate new information delivery mechanisms that prompt patients to improve their self-care behaviors.
2. Help safety-net organizations understand how prototyping methodologies can increase the efficiency of implementing new ideas.

One of the first things that we did was to learn directly from consumers themselves through ethnographic observation and structured consumer interviews. From there, we reconvened as a group to do storytelling and share insights we gained from consumers. The process then shifted to a group exercise of generating themes and how-might-we statements.

The second day began with intense brainstorming, followed rapid prototyping in which we develop what IDEO calls “10-dollar, 10-minute” prototypes. The idea was to actually develop something concrete and then we presented these prototypes to three people who live with chronic conditions. Before building out more fully, it’s critically important to get direct feedback from the target audience for your innovations.

Far more detail about what we learned and what we developed can be found in the report. We look forward to lots of feedback on our findings, and suggestions for where we might take this work next.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 8:57 am and is filed under Engaging Consumers, Innovation, Patient Stories, Research, Safety-Net Populations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.