News & Events > Design of health information

Experienced based design (ebd) is an exciting new way of bringing patients and staff together to share the role of improving care and re-designing services. It is being developed by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement as a way of helping frontline NHS teams make the improvements their patients really want.

The ebd approach is very new for the NHS. Where it has been used in the health service, it is having amazing results -  delivering the sort of care pathways that leave patients feeling safer, happier and more valued, and making staff feel more positive, rewarded and empowered.

Using experience to design better healthcare is unique in the way that it focuses so strongly on capturing and understanding patients', carers' and staff experiences of services; not just their views of the process like the speed and efficiency at which they travel through the system. Instead, this approach deliberately draws out the subjective, personal feelings a patient and carer experiences at crucial points in the care pathway. It does this by:

• encouraging and supporting patients and carers to 'tell their stories'
• using these stories to pinpoint those parts of the care pathway where the users' experience is most powerfully shaped (the 'touchpoints')
• working with patients, carers and frontline staff to redesign these experiences rather than just systems and processes.
  

The NHS Institute has now developed an introduction to the ebd approach, with a DVD which will show you how you can improve your patient's experience.  The ebd approach guidance and toolkit, which will support you to design your own health care services based on patient and staff experience is also available. The toolkit is available to all staff working in NHS England (up to 20 copies per organisation). Both the DVD and toolkit are available on the  NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement web site.

A master class at this year's PiF conference discussed this new approach - a copy of the presentation will be available on the PiF web site soon.

www.institute.nhs.uk/quality_and_value/introduction/experience_based_design.html