Value Creation Through Service Design in a Healthcare Environment

After cancer diagnosis, patients experience shock, anger and fear which makes the gathering of the information that would help to understand the upcoming life a difficult task. For most patients, their healthcare team is the primary source of information; however, they feel that their information needs are unrecognised or unmet. Based on this perspective, this study aims to explore how design could contribute to reducing the stress level of patients related to the information-seeking after being diagnosed with cancer through a human-centred design process via following a bottom-up approach in collaboration with a healthcare institution in Eastern Europe. The study shows that having a human-centred design process followed by a bottom-up approach could help design researchers and developers to challenge the hierarchical situations in order to create solutions focusing on patients who could be in quite vulnerable situations when they are just diagnosed with cancer.