Introduction of Service Design in a Public Hospital’s Medical Oncology Service

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present an initial phase of the introduction of service design practices in a Spanish public hospital. Service design helps to innovate and improve the users’ experience and processes that build a service. Experience is defined as interactions and involvement of the users with the service, while the processes represent all the operations, protocols, and work tools needed to deliver the experience. Offering experiences focused on patients is considered as a synonym of quality patient care. Facing the design process focusing on user needs is one of the principles of service design so their applications to public health care services can have a positive impact on patients’ experience. As a first step to introduce service design widely in the hospital, a pilot case was proposed to redesign one of the hospital’s services, to then extend the project to further potential services. To decide which hospital service was likely to be redesigned, several factors were taken into account, as the interest for the hospital, the patients and the contribution of the research.