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Hacking Health: Cognizant Teams up With the New School on Design Jam

Cognizant, Idea Couture and ReD Associates, in conjunction with the New School, a New York City based progressive university recently held a health care Design Jam at the university. Bringing together students from a range of disciplines, teams were tasked with ‘Hacking Health’ and developing new and innovative approaches to patient-centered systems of engagement.

Collaborating in teams, students worked over the course of 3 days to study, envision and redesign a healthcare experience of their choice.  The one caveat, their projects needed to touch upon issues of privacy, patient empowerment, and medical access.

“A generation of digitally empowered consumers has emerged, demonstrating new perceptions and behaviors related to privacy, data, services and institutions. Working with the New School, we were able to bring together dozens of students from a variety of disciplines to explore, identify, and examine how digital, coupled with consumer behaviors, impact the evolution of health care and define new modules to managing health,” commented Carly Burton, Global Experience Strategy Director, Cognizant.

“We asked students to consider how three main forces – consumers and organizations reconfiguring data usage and sharing and the boundaries of privacy; the increase in availability and volume of highly personalized data; and the access of healthcare migrating away from formal institutions – are reshaping today’s health care industry and systems of engagement,” said Jamer Hunt, Associate Professor of Transdisciplinary Design, The New School.

More than 30 graduate students and upperclassmen representing cross-disciplinary thinking to design solutions, including social sciences, fashion, humanities and creative design fields, were directed to build upon their experiences with navigating and hacking health care access.  The teams were instructed to identity new and innovative approaches to remaking a patient centered health care interaction.

“The reality of the healthcare system is that it is incredibly complex and doesn’t always orient care in ways that tangibly improve people’s experiences or outcomes. That said, there is also great opportunity for innovation. What was so exciting was that, in their ideas, the students at the New School were able to tap into and bring together diverse forms of data into new configurations of possibility while still retaining a sense of empathy and connectedness to the essential humanness of health experiences,” said Marc Lafleur, Vice President Insights for Idea Couture’s health practice.

At the end of the weekend, ideas were pitched to a panel of industry experts and included reimagined modules of managing personal health data; new patient journeys supported by digital and physical products; and connected product and service ecosystems that could reshape health care. Associates from Cognizant, Idea Couture, ReD, and Forrester Research assessed final concepts according to potential for impact (both on scale and value), feasibility, differentiation and creative expression.

“While large, formal healthcare systems, whether in the US or abroad, do a great job of managing the needs of large populations, they also face challenges,” continued Hunt. “Fears of privacy, costs, and distrust, in general, in the system are driving new behaviors and consumers are, increasingly, finding alternative ways to navigate or work around these complex systems.”

“We were all inspired by the students approach to designing for these new consumer behaviors, understanding emergent needs, and navigating constraints within the health care system. Overall they collectively demonstrated the value in using critical, creative problem solving for real world solutions,” added Burton.

This spring, Cognizant and the New School will continue their relationship, working with students on a course focused on data for improved health management. The course specifically will focus on how to collect, analyze and visualize health data to improve the management of chronic illness. This course will also bring together students from varying educational disciplines in an effort to envision and build new systems of healthcare management.

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