The 9th International Health Humanities Conference

Presentation information

Oral presentation

Practice (Implementation)

[9] Oral presentation

[9-16] Improving healthcare environments through human-centered design

*Lizette Spangenberg1, Duncan Reyburn1 (1. University of Pretoria(South Africa))

Presentation language:English

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Human-centered design, broadly conceived, is a problem-solving approach that aims to put people first. It is widely used in the user-experience design community, and many other fields also stand to benefit from it. Healthcare in particular has a tendency to focus heavily on technology and science, and often doesn’t consider the people interacting with systems or processes – such as doctors, nurses, patients, etc – enough when creating solutions. Human-centered design is increasingly being applied to the field of healthcare to assist in creating solutions that don’t just define people based on their “illness” or “professional skill”, but that treats them as individuals. It includes them in the creation of a solution for the problem space in which they are engaged, and especially allows for finding solutions in more underprivileged areas that may have unique restrictions in terms of budget, remote locations, access to materials, outdated equipment, etc.