Designing the System: Frail Young

Titled, “The Designing the System: How parents of the Frail Young view the system of care (Frail Young)”, this project presents an opportunity to re-imagine the future of healthcare and the way healthcare services are delivered to children with chronic, complex and potentially life-threatening illnesses. 

As part of the Health Design Lab (HDL) at Emily Carr University, we collaborated with Canuck Place Children’s Hospice, BC Children’s Hospital, and UBC research cluster team on this project. Our purpose was to ask parents about their experiences getting care for their children, and to gather their ideas for changing the system of care, to inform possible new models for care. 

We identified the following research questions/objectives for this project:

What are the unstated (and often unrecognized) experiences, needs, challenges, and values of parents with children in complex care?

How might we improve/change the way care is organized and provided for these children?

To address these questions, the HDL team used a range of human-centred design methods including secondary research, empathy toolkits and co-design workshops. The design process and strategies utilized for this project often happened in conjunction with one another through an iterative process.