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How One Company Uses Design Thinking To Create Better Patient Experiences: Building Empathy And The Human Experience Into Work

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Lisa Ruiz is the head of regulatory affairs, Latin America, for biopharmaceutical company AbbVie. Her work takes her in and out of board rooms, airport lounges, and health care systems throughout the western hemisphere. Where it usually does not take her, however, is into patients’ living rooms.

Perhaps that’s why Ruiz is unable to forget the experiences she has had meeting patients and hearing their stories. As patients share their experiences with their diseases, they talk about their hopes, fears, and the impact on their lives and the lives of their loved ones. The stories are always poignant

“I remember one story as a man shared his fear of the impact of his disease, of him not being there for his son,” Ruiz recalls. “That’s something that really resonates for me, as a parent.”

Ruiz was there with her colleagues from AbbVie to hear first-hand how patients experience their journey through the diagnosis of a condition and treatment as well as navigating the health care system process. Using her design thinking training, Ruiz asks the patients to talk her through their day, to understand the experiences.

Thanks to interactions like this, and many others, AbbVie uses patient insights to design solutions to the gaps in healthcare solutions they identify.

Building empathy and human experience into work

Design thinking is a creative process of problem solving that is human-centered. Participants address concerns and solve problems by thinking about how people might interact with a product or experience, both physically and emotionally.

While design thinking was made popular by design firms like IDEO and is now in wide use, the process is based on the stages of experiential learning, as established by researcher David Kolb. Kolb’s stages are (1) concrete learning, which happens through a new experience, or through taking a new perspective on a familiar experience; (2) reflective observation, where you reflect on that experience; (3) abstract conceptualization, where you begin to advance you’re thinking by forming new ideas; and finally, (4) active experimentation, where you apply and test your ideas.  

In design thinking, participants begin with concrete learning that involves empathetic experiences either through talking with and observing real life users, or by role playing the experience. As the participant reflects on these experiences, new ideas emerge; eventually the participants in design thinking can begin to experiment with these ideas, often through iterative prototyping process. In the case of AbbVie, this might lead to the development and refinement of novel solutions to patients’ problems and concerns, for example.

AbbVie first used design thinking to understand the patient experience. Ruiz recalls another patient she spoke with, a woman with cancer whose treatment had been delayed due to misdiagnosis. “Her whole life was turned upside down by that diagnosis,” Ruiz recalls. The effects of her treatment had a profound effect on her physically and impacted her relationship with her husband. Her story prompted Ruiz and colleagues to consider how they could truly care for patients with these challenging experiences.  

“It goes beyond a pill or injection; it goes to treating the whole person,” says Ruiz. These empathy-driven interactions prompted new ideas like considering how the company might provide other services for patients or connect them with support groups for people with a similar diagnosis.

“When I think about my experience with design thinking, it’s not so much about the amazing and creative ideas you can come up with,” says Ruiz. “For me, the big thing was always about this connection on a personal level. Understanding the humanity of the people that we’re working for.”

How companies can use design thinking

Ruiz has a doctorate in values-driven leadership and helped lead Abbott Laboratories’ split into two publicly traded companies. From her decades of experience in business, Ruiz knows that leaders have a natural impulse to drive toward solutions. “It’s hard to have people suspend judgment,” she says. But the impulse to make decisions quickly leads toward answers based on what you already know. Design thinking provides an opportunity to slow the decision making down, consider new perspectives (like those of the end user), and find new insights for problem solving.

“The challenges we’re talking about are complex challenges that don’t have easy answers,” says Ruiz. New insights and approaches are needed.

In addition to delivering insights for patients, Ruiz finds the design thinking process helps her team collaborate better; it increases employee engagement, helps team members connect to the organization’s higher purpose, and grows organizational energy.

“It has lots of little ways it can influence,” Ruiz says. “It drives toward the culture we want to have as a company.”

In next week’s column, we’ll look beyond AbbVie to explain how leaders at all levels can put design thinking to work in both big and small ways.  

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