Seven years ago, I became fixated on an existential dilemma: how to bridge the chasm between the healthcare and design industries.  Leading the healthcare practice for one of the largest design firms in North America and still practicing as a physician, the gap I saw was profound.  

You see, healthcare is very data-driven: in God we trust, everyone else bring hard data.  In contrast, designers embrace qualitative data, human-centered design and a more iterative exploration of solution creation, sometimes with -- and sometimes without -- a deep understanding of healthcare.  Meanwhile, healthcare executives speak the language of business and regulations. 

Three very different groups.  Three very different languages.  Three very different perspectives on success and value.  Few have been able to bridge this gap.  To be honest, few have really tried.

On my quest for understanding, I read books, blogs, articles, you name it.  I attended and presented at medical conferences, design conferences and healthcare executive conferences.  Yet, the solutions I needed to guide the different constituents to alignment continued to elude me...until one day I stepped into the world of TEDMED.  A community of public health leaders, clinicians, researchers, scientists, designers, creators, innovators, and influencers, TEDMED is all about bringing together diverse points-of-view to help solve some of the greatest challenges facing the world today. 

My first year at TEDMED, I found the earliest inspiration for my challenge in the form two third-year medical students from St. Louis who wrote a book explaining the American healthcare system. That inspiration led to my creation of a “healthcare bootcamp” focused on teaching designers about the complexities of and impact factors shaping healthcare.  It taught our designers the language of healthcare.  That first “spark” of TEDMED also led to iteration of my own approach to guiding clinicians and executives through the design process, giving executives more of what they want and the designers more of what they need.   

In short, TEDMED has transformed my world for the better, and it continues to make me a better strategist, a better clinician, a better colleague, and a better human.  

It goes without saying that each year I look forward to three days of pure inspiration, contemplation and realization with each TEDMED program.  This year’s TEDMED did not disappoint.  So, what were the three most profound nuggets of inspiration I walked away with this year?

Stop Wasting So Much Time Worrying About Your Brand and Start Demonstrating Your Authority

Pop quiz! (I bet you didn’t see that coming in a light read)

Name THE authority in high-performance golf equipment.  What about THE authority on what’s hot in fall fashion?  Now name THE on-line retail authority.  Ever consider who THE authority is for breast cancer care?  How about THE authority for cervical spine disease management?

A brand is a set of perceptions or associations an individual has of a business or a product.  An authority, on the other hand, is something that has demonstrated market dominance or disruptive difference.  An authority has achieved accolades or success that rises above others in the same sector.   A brand is an idea, a concept, an experience, while an authority is a “proven.”  All authorities have a brand, but not every brand is an authority.

In-house creative teams and consultants toil over the look of a website, stories that demonstrate authenticity and experiences that are unique and allegedly consumer-centric.  The reality, however, is that in this day and age of social media, increasing transparency and pay-for-performance models, controlling one’s brand is more about what you do than what you say. So, what if your “brand” was focused on demonstrating through your actions, as much as through your words, that you are the undisputed leader?  Both patient and provider consumers see through brands that fail to deliver.  They recognize the inauthenticity of organizations that promise so much but deliver so little.

It’s time to stop trying to put lipstick on the proverbial pig by building brands that don’t carry with them the power of being an authority.  If you achieve the kinds of success that matter to different constituencies the brand will all but build itself.  Just ask organizations that do little to no marketing but are known as the go-to for whatever your need my be. Just think about the organizations you turn to for your needs without even a passing thought.

Which leads me to my next inspiration.

Big Problems Do Not Always Require Big Solutions

In my three decades in healthcare I’ve seen us glom on to everything from total quality management to lean to agile and everything in between.  We’ve spent countless hours and dollars convening teams to solve challenges that have vexed healthcare for years.  Sometimes we succeed, but often we create elegant solutions to the wrong problems.  Often, we spend countless hours trying to win an argument when we could be testing a solution. 

An example from my world of the ED:  In the never-ending effort to reduce length of stay we’ve developed some ridiculously complex intake processes.  We’ve implemented next-generation triage techniques, put advanced providers at the front door to initiate “order sets” and flow nurses who act more like air traffic controllers than nurses.  We’ve created fast tracks, vertical patient models, futuristic care pods and internal waiting rooms.  Sometimes these things help expedite care, but many times the solution is as simple as bypassing all of this complexity and putting a ready patient in an empty bed.

Team after team has obsessed on but failed to “fix” ED flow.  We’ve overcomplicated so much of what we’re trying to accomplish in healthcare.  Sometimes the best and easiest solutions are the workarounds providers and patients have developed on their own.  They’ve learned to be like water, flowing around, over or under obstacles.

We need to recognize that we can be more successful designing solutions with the adaptability of a Swiss army knife than we can be by creating the bespoke experience found in the precision of a Swiss watch.  And, in reality, if we want to solve some of the biggest challenges facing health and healthcare, we are going to need to be prepared to take on challenges that are not going to respond very well to overly complex solutions.

And with that, we come to my third inspiration stemming from the wonders of TEDMED.

We Can No Longer Turn Our Backs to the Moral Determinants of Health

Healthcare is a microcosm of societal blind spots and biases, many of which we’ve ignored for decades.  If I had a dollar for every patient I’ve seen bounce back due to alleged treatment failures or get labeled as non-compliant I could have paid off my student loans and bought that Aston Martin I’ve had my eye on.  We often fail to think about the impact we can’t always see. 

We rarely stop to ask a patient if they can afford the prescription we’re handing to them.  We don’t think to consider if they have transportation to the specialist across town.  It doesn’t always occur to us explore if a receiving service is culturally competent and able to provide a safe space to deliver healthcare services to patients who look, feel or believe differently than we do.

While we struggle to think about some of the basic things that stand in the way of cultivating healthy communities, most of us cannot even fathom what is would be like to consider how these broader issues impact healthcare.  Issues that have become moral challenges threatening the health and well-being of society as a whole.  It is time for healthcare to insert ourselves into the conversation.

Taking climate change as an example. There are countless ways climate change is negatively impacting health and straining already taxed healthcare resources.  In the words of one of the amazing TEDMED speakers, climate change has created a healthcare HEATWAVE.

As the ones responsible for ensuring the health and well-being of our communities, our failure to engage in the discussion and solution creation around the moral challenges facing our society today risks overwhelming the healthcare system.  We risk allowing more and more people to fall victim to health consequences that are 100% avoidable. 

What Does It All Mean?

If attending TEDMED reminds me of anything it’s that there are really smart, creative and dedicated people out there thinking about the future of health and healthcare, each coming at it from a different point-of-view, using a different language and often defining success differently. Success in the future demands that we move beyond what constrains us today.  Success mandates that we learn to speak the same language and align to the same measures of success and value.

We are stronger together than we are apart.  We are stronger when we sit down, check our egos and traditional roles at the door and learn to embrace the inherent value of everyone working together as equal partners.  We are stronger when we are focused on the same, clearly defined measures of success.  We are stronger when we commit to focusing on the real challenges, keeping the solutions simple. And most importantly, we are stronger when we push ourselves to see the bigger picture of what threatens our success.

The time to think and act differently is now.  Consumers are demanding it.  Regulators are requiring it.  Payers are expecting it.  And, quite honestly, it’s just the right thing to do.