Design4Health: developing design thinking bootcamps in the Middle East

Abstract

Healthcare systems worldwide are looking for ways to improve and innovate. This need was heightened with the 2020 covid-19 pandemic. Design thinking, a human-centred approach to generating solutions to weakly-defined challenges, is increasingly used. Literature on the planning and implementation of multidisciplinary design thinking approaches in healthcare, in the Middle East, is somewhat scarce. This chapter addresses this gap. Initially we briefly describe human-centred design and design thinking, as a general background. We then discuss design thinking in relation to experiential learning and related theories. Subsequently, we explain two iterations of the Design4Health Bootcamp, an intensive, multi-disciplinary, multi-collaborator program conducted in Dubai, UAE, in 2019 and 2021. We also discuss the Design Thinking Journey Map (DJTM), a toolkit we developed to facilitate the implementation of design thinking. We conclude with reflections and recommendations for universities and hospitals that seek to implement design thinking approaches to improve outcomes in health systems.