Designing a different future for health care

Long before the term reconciliation was discussed at Obama’s Health Care Summit, and even before Scott Brown was elected in Massachusetts, Jay Parkinson presented one solution to the health care crisis.  Our current system costs too much, is difficult to navigate, and very complicated to understand. In addition, while technology has helped many industries innovate and create new solutions to old problems, technology in the health sector has remained relatively stagnant.

via Pop! Tech

Back in 2007, Jay started using his iphone and his traveling doctor’s kit and started making house visits in New York City. For the  hundreds of thousands of young professionals who were uninsured in the city, they were able to check his google calendar, make an appointment, and he would visit. All of their medical records were added to his phone, and he was able to make recommendations for cheap referrals. He also was honest with patients about costs. Within a few weeks, the big media outlets caught on, and he was later featured in Wired, Fast Company and many more. He went on to develop Hello Health, which allowed other doctors to follow a similar model.

This past week, I was able to speak with him about his new project, a design firm called The Future Well. In our conversation, he reiterated the severity of the current health care system, and what will happen in the future. “Employers spend thirteen thousand  year  per employee on their health care, and over the next decade, it will rise to $29,000.” This is not sustainable, so like any one who is in the business of disruptive innovation, Jay is using The Future Well to design programs that can save people money. The word design had initially thrown me off, and I had trouble relating it to health care, but he quickly connected the dots, “design is making simple solutions to complex problems.”

For example: everyone has had to deal with the nurse triage system. You will call the doctor’s office, get a nurse, tell her/or him your symptoms, and she/he will do a basic diagnosis and determine the severity of your illness. The Future Well figured this process could be simplified  online. The triage answers are based on a set of well researched and documented protocols for each symptom that a nurse explains. Apple, AT&T and many others have online systems that provide customer service, so why can this not be replicated in the health care industry?

Part of Parkinson’s talent is to also explain complex problems, in simple ways. This skill translates well to the many conferences and speeches ( hear him at South by Southwest on Tuesday) he gives about looking at the health care industry in a different light.  While the conversation coming from Washington, DC about health care is still convoluted and complicated, it is refreshing to hear someone use the elements of design to reshape a crisis in our country.