Investigating the flow of patient care and organisational systems through the application of a human-centred design approach, this presentation covers the application of an Open Organisation lens to identify innovation opportunities within the people, processes and systems involved in the delivery of a healthcare service within NHS Ayrshire & Arran.
By definition, open organisations share common values, ideals, etc., that in turn influence how those organisations behave. This work discusses how design captured, communicated and disseminated these organisational values: the unwritten narrative of how we do things here, and what was learned by observing and directing a group of undergraduate product design students engaging with the innovation community within a National Health Service (NHS) Scotland hospital to apply a human-centred design approach to patient flow, from admissions to being discharged and sent home. Innovation communities within NHS Scotland can appear to be more open than the larger organisation they are part of. For this reason, the hospital organisational systems and processes were considered through an open organisation lens during the observations and evaluation phases of the project. The research project observed how product design students investigated the use of service design tools and visualisation of information to socialise thinking and facilitate collaborative sensemaking amongst themselves and with the teams of staff within the hospital. The aim of the project was to determine how design might facilitate sharing of information and knowledge across communities of innovation within the health service.

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