Service Design in Chronic Health

Every day we interact with services. From checking our mobile phone to taking the bus to work, from ordering shopping online to taking money out of the ATM. Most if not all of these services will have been designed, and we have a sense of which of these services are good or bad, and we can change providers based on this experience. Now consider health. The majority of the UK’s health provision is delivered as a service; in fact, the clue is in the title. The National Health Service (NHS) is the biggest provider of healthcare in the world. In 2014 the NHS employed 150,273 doctors, 377,191 qualified nursing staff, 155,960 qualified scientific, therapeutic and technical staff and 37,078 managers. It comprises 156 acute trusts, it’s planned expenditure for 2014/15 is £113.035bn and the NHS deals with over 1 million patients every 36 hours. Service design is an emergent discipline of design and as such, to date, has had little to do with the development of services in health. This chapter is going to reflect on the challenges changing societal needs will have on the way that health care is provided, and how by applying the theory, methods and practice of participatory service design, health services are able to respond and deliver services that ‘work’ for both patients, carers and health service providers. The chapter will set out a key challenge to today and tomorrow’s healthcare provision, in that the key resource to engage is now those individuals living with chronic conditions. Service design has particular strengths in involving a diverse range of stakeholders to co-design solutions that work for all.