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AbstractHealthcare systems are under high pressure, from chronic disease, and aging populations with their consequent array of issues. Healthcare professionals are asked to deliver better care with fewer resources, increasing efficiency and efficacy. Simultaneously, patients expect more personalized therapies and physicians are discovering the benefits of making patients more active in their own care. This paper outlines the challenge to arrive at healthcare decisions that are based not only on data but also on the patient’s values and preferences. However, helping healthcare to face this challenge requires designers to develop new skills and competences. The paper proposes some general competences that designers need to develop to provide design solutions to satisfy users and healthcare systems’ needs.

Improving the quality of patient care, generally referred to as Quality Improvement (QI), is a constant mission of healthcare. Although QI initiatives take many forms, these typically involve collecting data to measure whether changes to procedures have been made as planned, and whether those changes have achieved the expected outcomes. In principle, such data are used to measure the success of a QI initiative and make further changes if needed. In practice, however, many QI data reports provide only limited insight into changes that could improve patient care. Redesigning standard approaches to QI data can help close the gap between current norms and the potential of QI data to improve patient care. This paper describes our study of QI data needs among healthcare providers and managers at Vancouver Coastal Health, a regional health system in Canada. We present an overview of challenges faced by healthcare providers around QI data collection and visualization, and illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of different visualizations. At present, user– centred and evidence–based design is practically unknown in healthcare QI, and thus offers an important new contribution.