How Design Thinking and Quality Improvement Can Be Integrated into a “Human-Centered Quality Improvement” Approach to Solve Problems in Perinatology
Key Points
Both design thinking (DT) and quality improvement methodologies have their unique strengths and weaknesses. When integrated together into a “human-centered QI”approach, they can work synergistically to solve complex problems in health care. At its core, DT fosters empathy and a deep understanding for how “users” (patients, pro-viders, staff) think, feel, and act when experiencing a problem. The Double Diamond model is a DT framework that can be applied to understand a problem through the eyes of “users” (the people we are aiming to serve), develop potential solutions, and test them for viability. Although DT has begun to be applied in health care, it has yet to be adopted at scale.