Co-imagine Innovative Solutions for Tomorrow's Challenges in Health Ca

Rather than to immediately come up with a solution based on pre-conceptions, to instead understand the underlying problems first. In line with how Albert Einstein thought: - 'If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes"

Rise Interactive was contacted and given the assignment to design, plan and implement a new creative innovation process, where EIT health delegates were given support to step out of the box, explore obstacles and problems, and to create mutual understanding with the human - the user, the patient at the center.

The Brief

The Goal:

• Workshop with engaging methodologies to build Innovation by Design projects
• Needs & problems defined by research that engages network & knowledge

The Objective:

• To build impactful Innovation by Design projects and empower need owners in EIT health partnerships
• Highlight possibilities by use of empathy & experience methodologies to drive ideas and concepts.
• Embrace new perspective, promote thinking out of the box and stir new ideas. Positioning and definitions of problems.

 The Outcomes:

• New ideas with high impact and disruptive solutions.
• Approximately 30 concepts/project proposals for assessment (& development)

The idea with the user as the focus, was to let the workshop participants familiarize themselves with real events that arise in situations related to health and care at home. RISE developed empathizing role plays based on research interviews, to support a new way of "capturing" problems collaboratively. It is an engaging method that effectively simulates real experiences, which creates understanding and discussion about challenges and bottlenecks for today’s conditions to provide care at home. A number of problems are identified and the underlying factors that drive them.

With this process, our aim was to support effective learning, to create insights and understanding of the underlying needs and systems from different stakeholder perspectives. This type of new tool and approach, which is based on experience and empathy, creates an invaluable common understanding of the problems among key people and stakeholders throughout the value chain. Which creates the best possible input for formulating goals and visions based on valuable insights, supporting new constellations and collaborations.

Our work resulted in an innovation process designed to, through various creative exercises and steps, lead to concrete proposals for innovative customer and user-oriented solutions and business concepts in line with the customer's needs. The results were created, developed and staged jointly by the participants through prototypes, future scenarios (films) and business concepts /canvases. The results were in subsequent steps, evaluated in-depth though matchmaking by relevant companies and entrepreneurs.

We were honored to have been awarded the assignment, which is positive recognition for RISE design research and conviction that the individual's inherent creativity can be explored and developed to result in thought-provoking results through collaborative methods. To shift focus in order to find new perspectives, promote thinking out of the box and stir new ideas requires bravery, trust in design and people, and strong leadership. Insights that the innovation management within EIT-health has proven.

Project Team: Christina Öhman, Hayley Ho, Wasim Brikham, Maarten Smith, Aslak Felin

Some insights from the workshop participants:

“Very useful and sometimes unexpected information coming out as a result of the process. The power of the role-play”

“Good inspiring event fitting new perspective on health care provision – from the view of different stakeholder.”

“It is possible to come from a very small and specific case to more general problem that can be solved and applicable to other areas”

“It took 1,5 day of intense interaction to come up with idea. Also you need to think of patient perception and adopt”

EIT Health Ideation 2-day workshop was arranged in collaboration with EIT Health, CLC’s, CEA, in Grenoble, January 15-16, 2018. 

“Thank you and your team for your professionalism and high level of engagement. I think we all learned a lot during those two day"

Sylvie Bove, Director EIT Heatlh