Digital Health and Design Thinking

On the first day, Prof. Dr. Falk Uebernickel, Co-Head of the HPI d-school, gave a Spotlight Talk in the “AI and Society” section entitled:  

“Design as an Engine for Digital Health Innovation – How Human-Centered Prototyping creates real value for patients”  

His core message:  

Many brilliant technological solutions fail not because of the technology, but because of the reality of the people for whom they are intended.  

• Adoption is not a technological problem, but a human one: technologies develop quickly, but their introduction into everyday life is often slow.
• Design is the engine that brings innovation to life: only when solutions are consistently aligned with the needs and routines of users can they have a real impact.  
• Prototyping as the fastest route to truth: early, tangible prototypes allow assumptions to be tested and iteratively improved – long before significant resources are invested. 

Using two very different student projects, Falk showed how this approach works in practice and what role design plays in bringing together behavior, context, and evidence-based work.

Example 1: CURAFA – Rethinking access to primary healthcare in Kenya

In the CURAFA project, a social innovation pilot initiated by Merck KGaA in Kenya, a team worked with design thinking students to improve primary healthcare.  

A key challenge:  

There was little data on how people actually use healthcare services in their everyday lives. In order to develop effective solutions, the team first had to understand how people actually navigate their way to care.  

• The team observed interaction patterns in real-life contexts and accompanied patients on their journey through the healthcare system.  
• Interviews with healthcare providers revealed how they perceive access, trust, and value from their perspective.  
• A key learning: Many providers were primarily focused on optimizing the clinic—not the patient journey. The biggest gap was not so much in the available medical technology, but in the everyday barriers in patient behavior.  

The project impressively demonstrated how important it is to understand system logic as well as the individual realities of patients' lives.

Example 2: ABBI – A companion for people with multiple sclerosis  

In the ABBI project, the team worked on the question:  

“What could a patient support program of the future for people with multiple sclerosis (MS) look like?”  

MS affects approximately 2.8 million people worldwide. The disease can worsen slowly or abruptly – with a significant impact on everyday life. In terms of design, this means that solutions must support people long before they experience severe impairment.  

To understand this reality, the team relied on self-immersion and experiential prototyping:  

• limitations were simulated to experience firsthand how MS-related impairments feel in everyday life.  
• The team visited patients at home and observed everyday activities outside the clinic.  
• The focus shifted: it is not only medication that is crucial, but also the ability to function in everyday life.  

This research led to ABBI, a prototype for a digital companion:  

• ABBI sends daily micro-nudges – small prompts for movement and activity.  
• The goal is to maintain functionality for as long as possible and slow down the effects of disability in everyday life.
• The intervention is based on behavioral psychological mechanisms that have been previously tested in low-fidelity experiments. 

Beyond both projects, Falk formulated key learnings from numerous digital health initiatives:

• Behavior: The most significant bottleneck for impact is almost always human behavior—not technology.
• Context: Solutions only work if they are deeply rooted in people's lived reality.  
• Prototyping: Fast, tangible prototypes are the shortest route to the truth.  
• Value: Value is created when assumptions are tested early on – not just at the end of a development process.  
• Integration: Only the combination of design, evidence, and science enables scalable solutions. 

On the second day, we continued our contribution in the workshop section: Under the title “Bringing Design Thinking to Digital Health,” the HPI d-school offered a compact Design Thinking workshop in which participants could experience the process for themselves.  

The HPI d-school workshop team — Flavia Bleuel, Monika Frech, Lukasz Lata, and María-José Juarez Rodriguez — guided the group through a compact but intensive challenge:

Redesign the emergency room admission process to make it more comfortable for patients.

Based on this question, participants experienced the central phases of design thinking:

Understanding the challenge  

– What do we already know?  

– What else do we want to find out?  

Understanding users  

– The participants interviewed each other about their own experiences in emergency rooms.  

Deriving needs  

– What needs, emotions, and pain points become apparent during the admission process?

Developing ideas  

– Based on their insights, the teams generated creative ideas for solutions.  

Developing prototypes  

– The ideas were implemented as simple, tangible prototypes to bring the admission process to life.  

Testing and feedback  

– The teams tested their prototypes with the other participants: What works and why? What doesn't work and why?  

This allowed the guests at Mount Sinai Hospital to not only learn about design thinking in theory but also apply it in the context of their own healthcare practice. 

The workshop demonstrated the considerable potential that lies in combining clinical excellence, research, and human-centered design. For the HPI d-school, the Digital Health Partnership Workshop was a valuable opportunity to  

• provide insights into ongoing projects,  
• sharpen the role of design in digital health,  
• and identify possible starting points for future research collaborations with Mount Sinai Hospital.  

The discussions and joint activities made it clear: 
Tech innovation is nice, but without human-centered design and scientific rigor, it rarely turns into solutions that create real value in people’s lives.