Six lessons that guided 2016
1. In the 99% of healthcare that happens outside the doctor’s office, care planning is vital to reaching health goals
A team effort, led by Beth Herlin, developed content for a three part series unearthing the history of Care Plans, delving into the current state of care planning, and what all this means for their future development. This past Fall, Beth traveled to the Stanford Medicine X to give a keynote on Care Plans, and the concepts that the team developed continue to saturate our in-house and client based design.
Care Plans: A 3-part series of the landscape, design and future of personalized healthcare
2. Understanding that our health is determined by so much outside of medical care increases our responsibility for our own health
On the 25th of October, Social Determinants of Health visualization by Edwin Choi went live at determinantsofhealth.org. The giant printed posters made their way into Boston Children’s Hospital (Innovation Center), IoraHealth in Chicago, and MITRE, to name a few. They are a striking reminder of how our health is connected to more components than we realize and addressing health problems requires a holistic approach.
3. Bringing fun into care planning can help a new habit stick and open up otherwise difficult health conversations
The new 60-card care planning decks were finalized and shipped. Decks were given to attendees at the Partners Connected Health Symposium and the Partnering For Cures Conference. Care card stickers made it into the iOS Messaging App Store. Since then, the open source cards have popped up in a variety of talks and articles (e.g. Claudia Williams’ talk at Stanford Medicine X). At Health Refactored in Boston, Sugar Kills connected us with Susannah Fox (current HHS.gov CTO) and Alex Drane (co-founder of Engage with Grace and Seduce Health).
Susannah Fox and Alex Drane at Health Refactored, Boston
4. Pursuing radical transparency means promoting open source
Radical transparency has always been a core principle at Invo and has influenced everything from open standard Electronic Health Record design, to a visual primer on the Zika virus, and even our work on visualizing city budgets. We advocated for open source in healthcare through interviews (e.g. Juhan Sonin in the book Developing Citizen Designers by Elizabeth Resnick) and keynotes (e.g. Juhan at NE HIMSS).
Understanding Zika, a visual guide to the virus
5. Growth and development at Invo means cultivating a strong team and working on impactful projects…
2016 brought new faces and backgrounds into the studio, including interns Lilly Fan, from the Rhode Island School of Design, and Kelsey Kittelsen, from Dartmouth. Hrothgar, an Oxford mathematician and world traveling coder, and Sharon Lee, a biomedical engineer and artist from the University of Virginia, joined the team.
Sharon Lee, Biomedical Engineer and Designer from UVA
Hrothgar, Mathematician and Designer from Oxford
We designed the genetic carrier testing experience for clinicians and patients with WuXi NextCODE, future visioning for Walgreens, health IT tools for Imprivata, Electronic Health Record workflow design with eMDs, big data analytics with Crimson Hexagon, design strategy for clinical trial matching based on genomics for Cure Forward.
6. … but it also means learning how to brew hard cider and making new friends
Taking time to try something new refreshes and primes our minds for the work we care so much about. This past year, we partnered with Collective Next to pilot their Graphic Facilitation workshop, and Grove to learn about planting, growing, and farming vegetables in the kitchen. Internally, we held our own tech-talks featuring typography, by Hrothgar, cider brewing, by Sarah Kaiser, and DNA sequencing, by Edwin Choi.
Craig McGinley explaining his graphic thought process
Next up for ’17...
Evolving care and transition planning (one collaboration is with our studio neighbor, Danny van Leeuwen) and an added focus on precision medicine for all, giving individuals full access, full ownership, and full participation in their health.