Five tips for experience designers working on healthcare innovation

Earlier this year Tracy Brown, a London-based UX designer, had the opportunity to work within an innovation lab called The Digital Innovation group (DIG), created as a collaboration between DigitasLBi and Astrazeneca to allow small, multi-disciplined teams the freedom to rapidly prototype and test new ideas for solving a variety of healthcare issues.

She got to focus on two big problems: how to help doctors around the world cope with their continual medical education (CME) needs and also how to solve the unique problems doctors and patients faced in the Chinese healthcare system.

Here are five things she learned that will help us rise to the challenge of designing effective solutions in the healthcare sector:
1. Start by understanding the difference between a problem and a symptom
2. Sometimes there isn’t an app for that
3. Don’t resign yourself to what you have permission to solve
4. Sometimes not being a medical professional is useful
5. Challenges will come in every size and shape