Boston College HATCHERY introduces design ideation and prototyping to nurse innovators using its new ‘Mobile Maker Cart’ at SONSIEL’s ‘ThinC 2024 Conference’
In early summer 2024, SONSIEL (Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs & Leaders) celebrated its five-year anniversary with a three day THInC conference (The Healthcare Innovation Conference) at Mass General Brigham, Boston with over a hundred registrants.
The theme was “Take it Apart. Fix It. Build it Better!”, a three-day design innovation and prototyping collaborative workshop. Through our design strategy consultant, Rachael Acker (Founder of Healthero, LLC), the BC ‘Design Commons Collective’ team inspired nurse innovators from around the world. The Hatchery’s new Mobile Maker Cart was a big hit at the conference. This customizable cart has been designed and constructed by our very team to offer introductory low fidelity prototyping.
It was also the first time Rachael Acker introduced a Generative AI pitch co-authoring tool Narratize, a reusable Systems-driven Innovation Poster; and Speculative Design North Star Generation cards as a new human-centered design ideation tool.
THInC Day 1: Mini-Hack4Health
The mini-hack4health kicked off with eleven interdisciplinary teams, most meeting each other for the first time that day. Teams were provided Innovation Posters as worksheets, sponsored by the Design Commons Collective at Boston College. Teams crafted their North Star using Healthero’s Design fiction cards, iPromptly, to dial up the innovative ideas.
Teams went from “Problem Definition”, to “How Might We… Ideation” to “Practice Pitching” in the same day.
To drive home the point that healthcare is an ecosystem, teams were guided through a modified version of the design thinking empathy map to reflect on barriers across the system and to consider cultural nuance and belief systems in their solutions.
“Speculative design is like giving your imagination a stethoscope and letting it check the pulse of the future."
During Ideation, teams were introduced to Futures Thinking. Speculative Design was introduced as a method to envision plausible futures. It’s a method for diagnosing future problems, not designing the interventions to implement.
Each future scenario pushes the boundaries of what’s possible, encouraging teams to think beyond present limitations. The goal was not to predict the future but to explore various possibilities and understand the implications of future innovations. By engaging in speculative design, teams would be able to uncover hidden needs, anticipate challenges, and through the process, be inspired to design practical solutions that can be tested and refined.
Team Innovation Posters
At the end of the day, posters lined the walls, evidence that strangers can come together as a team to solve a problem, in hours. Innovation isn’t just about creative problem solving, it’s about learning how to work as a team.
Everyone is an active participant at this un-conference!
Later that evening. Rachael received the annual Global Nurse Ally award
THInC Day 2: Prototyping & Storytelling
Innovation is messy. Designing innovative solutions requires a psychologically safe space to fail forward, fast.
Creative problem solving is best learnt as experiential exercises from the perspective of a beginners mindset. Design thinking is really a way of activating curiosity through design doing.
Experiential “learning by doing” creates the necessary space for team members to develop shared language, which in turn, opens up space for solutions to emerge. When trust develops, everyone is able to build on each other’s ideas.
It’s important to note that participants need to first un-learn the instinct to solve from evidence, let go of preconceived ideas of a solution and instead trust that the design process will enable a more innovative solution to emerge.
An innovation is a solution that generates evidence-based practice.
Prototyping
Prototypes fall into four types of solutions:
Tangible products — medical or healthcare products or devices,
Digital solutions — like chronic care interventions or behavior change apps,
Services — care delivery models
Workflows/processes — health research, educational strategies, innovation pipelines.
Each can be represented by different materials and require different skillsets to develop.
To create prototypes, teams were introduced to a mobile prototyping cart from the Hatchery, thanks to Sunand Bhattacharya, AVP, Design & Innovation Strategies at Boston College. Inspired by tangible materials, one team decided to pivot to an alternative solution, proving that the creative design process is not linear. The more you learn, the more iterations, the more you iterate, the more you learn. It’s dizzying!
Storytelling
An effective pitch engages the audience with heart as much as the head. Hiyam Nadel (President,SONSIEL and Director of Innovation in Care Delivery, Mass General Brigham) introduced the 3-ACT method of pitching, helping teams understand the story arc to develop more effective pitches.
The more time you spend clarifying the problem and solution, the easier the pitch development. The teams were in flow but we needed more time for solution-ing!
THInC Day 3
By Sunday, teams were jazzed up to pitch. Teams pitched to a team of judges: Stephanie Pitts, Paul Coyne, Sunand Bhattacharya and Hannah Berns.
Pitch highlights
WINNER: Flamingo Network, building connections to address postpartum depression.
RUNNER UP: Care traffic controller, a solution to match mental health patients in the ER to an available psych bed more efficiently.
SHINE, to enable peer support of new nurses entering practice.
WellNest, encouraging youth cancer patients to increase physical activity through behavior change nudges.
Purpose Pods, reimagining the nurses station to include spaces to recharge and connect with wisdom mentors.
MedEase, the medication solution.
Diabetes Prevention Program for the Asian community, a phased approach to preventative care at the community level (developed by Prof. Tam Nguyen (CSON) along with her team )
WayCarer, a simpler technology based solution to monitor the health of aging adults at home.
Autonomia, a solution to gather patient health goals while waiting to see their provider, with a just in time summary.
#NPwr, pivoted from documentation to a supporting “hand” for reaching hard to reach places.
It’s always inspiring to see how quickly teams form and pitch only after 2 nights. What’s more amazing are the vulnerable stories of lived experiences shared by these brave presenters. Sharing stories reminds us of what makes us human. Innovation is built from human stories. Healthcare innovation is also fundamentally collaborative rather than competitive. Health Innovation Workshops create space to connect solutions within a health ecosystem and close health gaps by recognizing new value propositions and inspiring new business models.
Our very own nursing professor, Tam Nguyen (CSON) along with her team presented their Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) problem analysis using the design and innovation processes.
"Our team loved the hackathon and the experiential learning process. It opened our eyes to a whole new way of thinking and creating. We learned to work under stress, pitch ideas, fail fast, and come up with new strategies in a safe environment. We also came away with deep gratitude for all the expertise and resources available at Boston College. It was clear by the end of the event how lucky we were to be a part of Boston College." - Dr. Tam
AI for Design Research + Experience Design
Looking ahead, Rachael Acker continues to refine the Innovation Collaborator GPT, a co-design AI companion tool for educating and guiding healthcare hackers through the design innovation process. The knowledge enables the GPT to understand design thinking methods, ideation methods, biomimicry driven strategies, behavior change strategies, journey mapping and futures thinking. As a companion, the tool guides innovators through the design process, step by step, starting with developing a psychosocial phenotype and empathy maps to frame the problem. This problem framing conversation then informs the ideation collaboration to design future scenarios and action plans.
Special shoutout to the BC colleagues who supported the teams over the weekend — Ed O’Brien, Lucas Ewing, Brian Reeves, Vaishanavi Mehta, Tam Nguyen (Nursing)