A recent workshop gathered University of Nebraska faculty and clinical staff from Nebraska Medicine to use a new approach to develop solutions to the ongoing problem of patient falls, part of an effort funded by a Nebraska Research Initiative grant.
“A major emphasis of this grant was to provide design thinking training and resources to faculty across the University of Nebraska System,” said Tyler Scherr, PhD, UNeMed’s senior licensing specialist and business development manager, who organized the event. “I can’t wait to see how these creative faculty and clinicians implement design thinking to tackle problems and improve outcomes in their own units, departments and colleges.”
Led by Doug Deitz, an industrial engineer and former design team lead at GE Healthcare, the Nebraska X Design Workshop was a two-day event. The first day was an immersive boot camp that versed participants in the Design Thinking methodology.
The Design Thinking approach is a five-stage process that asks participants to empathize with and then define a problem, followed by brainstorming ideas and, finally, building and testing a prototype.
On the second day, those methods were put to use in finding a way to help prevent the more than 250,000 injuries and 11,000 deaths that happen as a result of patient falls each year in American hospitals.
“We were challenged by Chancellor (Dele) Davies to use design thinking methodology to attempt to get into the head of a patient; to see things from a patient’s perspective as proximal to a fall event as safely and ethically possible,” Dr. Scherr said.
The solutions proposed and developed during the workshop will be further reviewed by UNMC leadership and Nebraska Medicine officials, which could potentially lead to further development or even commercialization.
There were 25 participants, including representatives from all four University Nebraska campuses. The workshop was held on Nov. 11-12 in UNeMed’s training classroom in the Omaha Catalyst building.
The Nebraska X Design Workshop was the culmination of a two-year Nebraska Collaboration Initiative grant from the Nebraska Research Initiative, and hosted in collaboration with UNeMed, UNeTech, UNMC Design Thinking and the Nebraska Medicine Innovation Design Unit.
“I want to thank Executive Vice President and Provost David Jackson, PhD, for the Nebraska Collaboration Initiative funding,” Dr. Scherr said. “We set out to pilot the efficacy of applying design thinking principles to clinical challenges, and over the course of two years of funding, we convened over 80 interdisciplinary students, faculty and clinicians, resulting in four promising new inventions in various stages of prototyping and testing.”
Anyone interested in learning more about design thinking and would like access to the leadership team and university resources can visit the following and reach out to a member of the UNMC Design Thinking Leadership Team: