Oslo University Hospital, the largest hospital in Scandinavia, approached us to reduce the time to diagnosis, and improve the overall experience for breast cancer patients during this difficult time.
In order to gain a common understanding of the patient’s journey, our joint OUH and Designit team facilitated a workshop with 40 employees across the hospital’s departments, as well as in-depth interviews with patients themselves. One of the most remarkable insights was a fundamental difference in perspective:
Recognising the important role they play in their patients’ lives, the hospital staff worked with the designers to completely rethink the patient’s path from GP to diagnosis. Using service design methods, they came up with ways to work differently with new routines to reduce the diagnosis period.
The new process also considered the patient’s experience along every step of the journey. After finding that a lack of clarity compounded the stress of waiting, we designed materials to help patients understand the next steps of their diagnosis and bring peace of mind.
With a 90% reduction in time from referral to diagnosis, from 12 weeks to a total of seven days, this has now become the precursor to the national standardised procedure for breast cancer and psychiatric treatment, introduced in January 2015.
Outcome
Norwegian ‘Award for Design Excellence’
The Service Design Award
IxDA award
The disruptive
People’s Choice category
INDEX
Award finalist
SDG 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
OUH is now equipped with a better understanding of the patient experience, and able to more quickly diagnose breast cancer patients.
Details
Client
Get in touch
Niklas Mortensen
Chief Design Officer, Europe,
Oslo,
Munich,
Madrid,
London,
Copenhagen &
Aarhus
