IDEO are a very interesting design and innovation firm based in California, and have done a lot of work in this area with Kaiser Permanante. They have provided assistance to the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, Texas Children's Paediatric Associates, (the largest primary paediatric care network in the US) and many others. Their website is well worth checking out for anyone with an interest in healthcare innovation in its softer (i.e. not hardware, expensive drugs and hi tech equipment) guise. What caught my eye recently was a blog by an IDEO employee with the title that I have posted above. I liked their use of data from Twitter, and Google Analytics to measure the "buzz" in real time generated by their ideas.
This comes back to the point made by Maureen Bisognano recently, about using the power of patients to seek ideas. If we could measure what people believe is important judged by what they search or discuss on line, perhaps it might help us focus on what matters to patients as opposed to what matters to the "providers". Just a thought.
This I think is an area where some Irish design consultancies might find a niche.