How can we design better approaches to collaborative care that support societal well-being and address inequity in the caregiving population?

We’ve had the good fortune to partner with many amazing clients and collaborators over the past ten years. We asked one of our favorites, Gwen Conner, to sit down and discuss emerging trends in health and wellness with Evolve Cofounder, Paul Backett. Below is an excerpt from our conversation on the caregiving economy.

Gwen has spent the last 25 years in healthcare innovation and business strategy and is currently with Point B, a management consulting firm that specializes in solving challenges through collaborative approaches in business transformation and technology services.

The Facts:

• In the US, the care economy is estimated to be a $648 billion market spanning from childcare to eldercare.

• The recent white paper published by The Global Future Council on The Future of the Care Economy, a part of the The World Economic Forum, elevates the interests of caregivers and details our need to embrace innovative strategies and collaborative frameworks between governments, companies, and communities.

• Currently about one in every seven Americans is over the age of 65, and by 2040, that number will grow to one in five.

• About 54% are considered to be caregivers because of the help they provide to one or more people who are 65 and older.

• These shifts will certainly require a new approach to providing care to patients and supporting their caregivers.

Paul and Gwen, what do you see are the opportunities for human-centered design to address the specific challenges and needs of elder patients as well as formal and family caregivers?

Gwen Conner: What I think is really fascinating about this subject is that it represents an opportunity to address a massive dynamic system of many interconnected parts. Within healthcare we are often designing around a single user - so often the patient or the provider. We can design care products and services that reflect multiple people and facilitate the connections between families, communities, and providers. You have the caregiver, you have the person that they're caring for, and multi-generational care networks. It could be long-term care insurance, it could be automated meal planning, or it could be renovations to the home to make it more accessible. These products and services really help consumers afford to care for the people in their lives. 

Paul Backett: To use a human-centered design lens - I think what's fascinating to me is the generational shifts that will happen over the next 20 to 30 years. We'll shift from boomers to Gen Xers to Gen Y looking for elder care. I think these shifts will be radical, and I think they're going to come faster and faster. The expectations are going to shift more quickly. We need to get out there and start spending time with these communities, right? To make sure that we're caring for and designing with them, not just designing for this next generation of the aging population. I think the best case of human centered design is when we're actually empowering these communities to design it for themselves, right? Really integrating them into the design process.

Paul, the next question is for you, what common biases and misconceptions do you see that often impede equitable healthcare for these specific populations, either the folks, the elder folks, or their caregivers?

Paul Backett: There's a very obvious one that I think we see time and time again. There's a major misconception that the elder population are technophobes or that they don't want to engage with technology. Through the studies that we've done over the years we found the exact opposite. There's plenty of people in the elder population who are very much plugged into technology and want to use technology to help them manage their care and live a healthier life. However, it doesn't mean just throwing technology at the problem. We need to have focused solutions with a deep understanding of the customer and their needs. (It’s also about) picking the right technology that can actually smooth out bumps and reduce friction.

At Evolve I hear this conversation a lot around looking outside of healthcare, looking to other industries to find positive solutions that can better address these challenges, whether it's technology or non-technology options. So in your view, what can we learn from industries outside of healthcare that could better address the challenges we're seeing?

Gwen Conner: It’s about having a multi-user approach. You can think about Netflix and the entertainment sector having multi-users. I have preferences and permissions for me, my husband has his, and my children have theirs. You think about collaborative software products with Google Docs and being able to easily share editing and commenting between family members. That capability for multiple contributors is something that would be really beneficial for caregiving products and services.

Paul Backett: Customer, member, and patient expectations - they move at the speed of the best experience available. In the Netflix example - how easy it is for people to find what they're looking for and to personalize it. That expectation gets passed to healthcare. Why shouldn't healthcare be as easy as Netflix, right? Why can't I find information in the same way? We try as much as possible in our design processes to bring that outside inspiration.

The game that we play in our collaborative workshops that always get the most cheers is called Brand Slam. We take a bunch of brands and products that have nothing to do with healthcare and we reimagine them to design aspects of healthcare. It’s a kind of a brainstorming tool to force people to think differently about how they could solve a problem or meet a need. Healthcare needs to be ready to match other industries, because that's the expectation.

Stay tuned for more Shop Talk conversations with Evolve partners and industry experts.