Service Innovation by Patient-Centric Innovation Processes

The chapter explains how to foster innovation and service excellence in hospitals by the design thinking/service design approach. The content is retrieved from a current best practice case from Austria and represents the findings from other projects as well. The children’s center of the University Hospital of Graz used the approach to redefine their operational and leadership processes within a construction project. The two clinics involved were the surgical and internistic units. They aimed to design a unique patient experience within the new outpatient clinic. The central elements included iterative design cycles focusing on the patient experience, an interdisciplinary design team to create holistic solutions and the prototyping zone to design and test the solutions in a tangible context with the users, patients, and planning stakeholders. The design thinking approach initiated a company-wide change toward Patient First as a guiding principle to deliver healthcare.