This is the second post of three written to summarize what I learned participating in Medecision’s annual meeting with the company’s partners, held March 27-29, 2018 at the Ritz-Carlton in Dallas, TX. 

I concluded the first of this three-part series with Dr. Don Rucker’s belief that, “Patients are the massive use-case for interoperability.”

This second post focuses on the key role of designing for healthcare – for patients, caregivers, providers, all industry sector workers indeed. And designing information to make it beautiful, useable, meaningful.

You’ll read about Renaissance Man/Doctor Andrew Chacko MD, a board-certified physician, French and Physics student at the Naval Academy, Zumba instructor, and physician to patients in the VA system. And did I mention he studied at the Stanford University d (for design) school?

Among Dr. Chacko’s many lessons was this, borrowed from an African proverb:

Akpa le tome gake menya tsi fe vevie nyenyeo.

A fish is the last to acknowledge the existence of water. 

In healthcare, we are swimming in a lot of water, Dr. Chacko observed.

He also echoed what many conference participants have learned in designing technology to solve problems in healthcare: “meet consumers where they are.” 

Tan Le, founder of EMOTIV, put a fine point on this point in her talk, which moved the audience to literal tears as she shared her experience as an immigrant from Vietnam traveling by boat to Australia with her family. “Embrace the differences in ourselves,” and that “possibilities outside our comfort zones.”

By doing so, we will indeed recognize the water in which we swim, and acknowledge and design for the glorious diversity of the other fish we meet along our journeys.

You can read the entire post and learnings in Take 2 of my 3-part series here in the Medecision blog.

“Take 3” of this series, to publish April 26, will address the big learnings shared during Liberation 2018. I’ll link that to the Medecision portal here once it’s live online.