Co-designing for Society

Healthcare is the issue that touches the lives of everyone. Adapting, changing and continually innovating healthcare is a complex undertaking requiring contributions from many different stakeholders including governments, professionals, carers, patients and the general public. But how do these groups come together, work together and share ownership in identifying challenges and creating and delivering solutions for the future of healthcare? thinkpublic is a multi-disciplinary social innovation and design agency. We aim to design better healthcare and develop lasting skills and capacity among service providers and users. We do this by using an approach called co-design. Our approach of co-design is grounded in understanding the real life experiences, ideas and skills of people, who use, need and run services. In the first Design + Health edition of the Australasian Medical Journal (AMJ) we presented Alzheimer100 [1] a project where co-design was used to collaboratively identify issues in dementia and develop a range of innovative responses that addressed them. In this paper, we build and elaborate on co-design, outlining in more detail its approach, tools, processes and practices. We will illustrate co-design through several projects we have undertaken such as: • Engaging residents of a council estate to improve health and wellbeing indicators; • Co-designing Perinatal Mental Health services; and • Implementing a dementia care service from the Alzheimer100 project. We will also discuss the results and benefits of co-design projects including: • Services that are more user-centred and more efficient; • More active citizens who can save the state money; • Unlocking sources of innovation at the service frontline; • The utilisation of limited resources that reach their maximum potential; • The output of creative solutions tailored to the real needs of people; • The creation of social capital; • The creation of buy-in and goodwill of key stakeholders; • Reinvigorated trust between citizens and the public sector; and • Empowered people who take more responsibility for their own well-being and the future. At thinkpublic we believe that co-design has a crucial part to play in the future of healthcare and services. Through co-design we believe that health services and care can be better for patients, professionals, carers and other stakeholders of one of the most significant issues of our time.