A design-led patient campaign development process for disseminating the concept of shared decision making

Design researchers and practitioners have started to collaborate with experts in diverse areas shifting the focus to healthcare, education and business. In one of these areas, healthcare, design researchers and practitioners have been exploring ways of engaging patients more actively in their own healthcare and wellbeing. Person-centred care and shared decision making are timely approaches in modern healthcare systems, where designers can leave their stamp by collaborating with stakeholders to create better healthcare services through finding different ways to communicate information, develop methods for engagement and undertaking design research to build an understanding of the barriers. Starting from the above perspective, this paper explores the role of design in a long-term collaboration between a hospital and a design school in Denmark focussing on the co-creation of a patient campaign for shared decision making (SDM). As evidenced by this research, using design expertise for supporting the development of SDM tools, processes as well as campaigns holds promises for assisting the implementation efforts at the clinic. It holds opportunities for raising stakeholder awareness and knowledge about the general concept and goals of SDM attracting core testimonials and potentially enabling a mutual understanding among the stakeholders based on empathy.