5 articles found
Empathy-Driven Innovation: Human-Centered Design Thinking for Transforming Healthcare Delivery
Background: Healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries [LMICs] face systemic challenges in high-stakes environments such as emergency medicine and intensive care. Limited resources, fragmented workflows, and communication gaps often compromise patient care. Human-Centered Design Thinking [HCDT] provides an empathy-driven, iterative framework for problem-solving tailored to these settings.
Methods: Two HCDT workshops were conducted in 2024 at Evercare hospitals in Lekki [Nigeria] and Lahore [Pakistan]. Using the Stanford d.school’s five-step framework—Empathy, Problem Definition, Ideation, Prototyping, and Testing—participants applied tools including empathy mapping, PICO problem dissection, brainstorming, and rapid prototyping. Teams included physicians, nurses, paramedics, and administrators.
Results: Eighty-six participants engaged, with 23 structured evaluations per site. In Lekki, solutions addressed referral delays and communication gaps through referral coordinators, checklists, and digital tools. In Lahore, ICU-focused teams developed interventions for staff turnover, communication inefficiencies, and humanization of care—culminating in the Empatheon program, which applied PDSA cycles to strengthen staff well-being and patient-family engagement. Both sites reported high satisfaction, with >65% rating inspiration, knowledge, and practicality as very high.
Conclusion: HCDT shows strong potential to address healthcare challenges in LMICs through low-cost, scalable, and context-sensitive innovations. Embedding empathy, co-creation, and iteration into care processes enhances outcomes and fosters sustainable, patient-centered innovation. Further validation through real-world implementation is warranted.
From Boarding to Breakthrough: Tailored Interventions for Vulnerable Patients
Emergency Department (ED) boarding–prolonged stays in the ED while awaiting inpatient placement–is a crisis exacerbating crowding, increasing costs, and negatively impacting health outcomes. Vulnerable populations, including individuals with low socioeconomic status (SES), medically-complex older adults, and psychiatric patients are disproportionately affected. Yet, solutions tailored to their needs remain underexplored. This discussion examines root causes of boarding and proposes innovative, scalable interventions to mitigate its harms, specifically for marginalized groups. We highlight three strategies: (1) Patient Navigators, who assist low-SES patients navigating healthcare systems, (2) Community Paramedicine, which delivers in-home care to complex patients, and (3) Emergency Psychiatric Assessment, Treatment and Healing (EmPATH) Units, which provide targeted care for psychiatric patients. All three are associated with reduced ED visits. Traditional approaches to boarding have fallen short, particularly for vulnerable populations. Patient navigation, Community Paramedicine, and EmPATH units represent feasible, evidence-based solutions that health systems can implement. Broader adoption of these models can alleviate crowding, enhance care quality, and promote health equity. Future efforts must align these innovations with policy and funding mechanisms to ensure sustainable, system-wide improvements.Innovation Skills Assessment in Healthcare: Benchmarking Capacities in Low-Resource Settings
ABSTRACT
Background: Innovation is a key driver of healthcare transformation, particularly in low-resource settings where systemic constraints often hinder service delivery. Assessing innovation capacities among healthcare employees can inform workforce development strategies. This study applies the previously validated Innovation Skills Assessment (ISA) tool to examine workforce innovation potential at a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan, offering insights for targeted capacity-building interventions.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted at Mukhtar A. Sheikh Hospital in Multan, Pakistan, using the ISA tool adapted from the General Innovation Skills Aptitude Test. The survey captured demographic data and assessed innovation skills across four pillars: idea generation, risk-taking, interpersonal relationships, and idea implementation. A total of 250 electronic surveys were distributed via hospital communication channels, with 161 responses (64% response rate). Responses were rated on a 5-point Likert scale, and mean scores with standard deviations were calculated for each pillar. Descriptive statistics were used to explore observable trends across age, gender, education level, and job designation, without formal hypothesis testing.
Results: Participants aged 36–45 years had the highest overall mean scores (4.48 ± 0.31), with notable strengths in idea generation (4.48 ± 0.31) and implementation (4.53 ± 0.33). Males showed higher average scores across all pillars, with interpersonal relationships as the strongest domain (4.49 ± 0.42). Participants with intermediate education reported higher mean scores in creativity and risk-taking (4.36 ± 0.45 and 4.20 ± 0.57, respectively). These patterns suggest potential demographic influences on innovation capacities.
Conclusion: The ISA tool can be feasibly applied to map innovation skills within healthcare workforces in low-resource contexts. The identified trends may help guide workforce development through tailored training and institutional policies that promote a culture of innovation.
Keywords: Innovation Skills Assessment, Healthcare Workforce, Low-Resource Settings, Human-Centered Design, Capacity-Building, Pakistan, Benchmarking, Workforce InnovationHuman Drugs & Veterinary Drugs - A Cost Comparison
Objective: The aim of this study was to provide an updated comparison of veterinary drug costs with human pharmacy equivalents.
Design: A cross-sectional study was conducted by identifying the 50 most common drugs from Medicare Part D spending data, and obtaining the costs of these drugs, in addition to select antidepressants and ophthalmic medications, from human retail (GoodRx, DiRx, and Cost Plus Drugs) and veterinary pharmacy websites (Chewy and Pet Meds).
Main outcome measures: Drug costs per tablet were calculated using 30-, 60-, and 90-count quantities. Drug cost data was normalized, and costs were compared via Student’s T-test.
Results: 41 drugs were analyzed between human and veterinary pharmacy alternatives. For 90-day supply costs, Cost Plus Drugs provided the cheapest price for 30/41 cases. The lowest normalized drug cost per unit 90-day supply was 0.4406 for Cost Plus Drugs, with DiRx second at 0.5789 (p < .05). For 30-day supply costs, Chewy provided the cheapest price for 30/41 cases. The lowest normalized drug cost per unit for a 30-day supply was 0.4665 for Chewy, with no significant difference to Cost Plus Drugs at 0.5270 (p > .05).
Conclusion: These results demonstrate that home-delivery pharmaceutical services offer more affordable options and address the high cost of human medications compared to equivalent veterinary medications. This represents a step forward in identifying solutions to reduce healthcare expenditures and pharmaceutical costs.
Leveraging Text-Based Outreach to Improve Enrollment in Federal Benefit Programs and Address Broadband Internet Access
Background: Federal benefit programs form the backbone of a social safety-net that provides access to essential services for millions of Americans. However, access to these programs is hampered by complex application processes and administrative barriers. Link Health is a Boston-based nonprofit organization that, through strategic community partnerships, has developed a framework to streamline benefit program enrollment, resulting in the disbursal of over $4 million in benefits. We evaluate the effectiveness of embedding benefits access within existing private messaging frameworks as a strategy for reducing systemic barriers to federal program utilization and improve broadband internet access.
Methods: In this prospective observational study of data from June 2024 through December 2024, Link Health conducted a targeted Massachusetts-based text-messaging campaign aimed at enrolling patients from partner community health centers in the Lifeline program, a broadband phone and internet access discount. DaisyChain, a web-based communication platform, enabled Link Health’s multilingual digital navigator team to collect patient responses and conduct follow-ups.
Results: The campaign reached 68,529 patients, with 2.15% (n=1,470) engaging with the initial message. Among those who engaged, 41.84% identified as Hispanic, 35.58% as White, 10.61% as Black or African American, and 2.79% as Asian. 62.59% of participants preferred English, 32.31% preferred Spanish, and 5.10% preferred another language. 68.91% of sign-ups were female. Applicants were predominantly working and middle-age adults, with 24.15% of applicants between the ages of 35-44 years and 24.15% between 45-54 years. Patients primarily qualified for Lifeline through SNAP (64.97%), Medicare (37.21%), or Medicaid (41.16%).
Conclusion: This study describes the effectiveness and feasibility of text-based initiatives in connecting patients from racially and linguistically diverse communities with the Lifeline benefit program. The campaign successfully and predominantly engaged Hispanic, publicly-insured groups, with an especially high enrollment rate among working and middle-age adults. By integrating digital technology with public health, Link Health’s text-messaging campaign provides a scalable and replicable framework to improve access to federal benefits.
