Estimated reading time: 8-10 minutes
I was heartened to see such an overwhelming response to my blog post on Design Thinking – so I wanted to start by saying thanks to each and every one of you in my network, and further afield, who read my words and engaged with them. To be connected in such a way really is both humbling and rewarding. It also inspires me to keep pushing to achieve our vision of unleashing the power of design in improving lives through better healthcare experiences.
A theme that presented itself in the comments of that post was around the notion of human centered design. As a concept of course this is something that been around for many years, but I think it’s only healthy to really hold the mirror in front of us as a community to just check, are we really always human centered in our approach? Even in the field of healthcare it’s all too easy to be distracted by the innovations in technology, data science, artificial intelligence or pharma and forget to check the impact these advances are having on the care providers and their patients.
Patients don’t really want to be experiencing healthcare, no matter how great it is, they would much rather be healthy and living life.
Sean Carney
Chief Design Officer & Business Leader Healthcare Transformation Services, Philips
Designing more seamless experiences that have impact, drive results, and which ultimately, lead to better outcomes for patients and better experiences for staff.
Sean Carney
Chief Design Officer & Business Leader Healthcare Transformation Services, Philips
I would love to know how we can be more effective and ensure we’re actually having a positive impact on people lives.
Sean Carney
Chief Design Officer & Business Leader Healthcare Transformation Services, Philips
I personally find working in this space hugely motivating and inspiring. But this isn’t about how I feel, this is about all those people in the healthcare systems, patients, families and staff and how they are doing. I would love to know how we can be more effective and ensure we’re actually having a positive impact on people lives. While we figure out how to measure impact, perhaps people have suggestions on effective measurements (beyond the typical NPS or outcomes scores) they’d be willing to share.
I accept that designing the perfect patient and staff experience is setting the bar very high, and won’t come easily. But for my part I’m committed to ensuring Philips designers and our innovation colleagues actively engage with people in the healthcare systems to ensure they have access to the right tools, right information, and right resources to deliver the best possible care to people in the most effective way.
Chief Experience Design Officer & Business Leader Healthcare Transformation Services
Sean Carney leads Experience Design (XD) and Consulting at Philips, ensuring that human-centered innovation practice and design thinking flows through the business and clinical practice. Sean is a frequent speaker on the value of Design Thinking and creative leadership and on driving transformation in Healthcare. With more than 30 years of experience as an international creative thought leader in design and innovation, focused on brand and user insight, he has a proven track record in building, leading and inspiring multi-disciplinary, award winning design teams across the US, Europe and Asia.
Before joining Philips, Sean pioneered user-centered approaches to brand design while working with a diverse set of companies around the world.
With over 90 years of design at the company, Philips Experience Design has an incredibly rich history of innovating to improve people’s lives. Today Philips Experience Design is making a bigger and bolder impact than ever before in reimagining and redesigning the future of healthcare globally. His team’s success in positively impacting the lives of users, clinicians and patients around the world, is widely recognized with 141 top design awards won by Philips last year.
June 20, 2022
- By Jan Kimpen
October 04, 2021
- By Jan Kimpen and Bodo Wiegand
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