The medical revolution you haven’t heard about… yet

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – The science and art of medicine have been undergoing increasingly rapid change for decades. New treatments are developed. New diagnostic tools arrive. Cures become imaginable where none were before. But there’s one area where change has been slow: design. And if you’re wondering what design has to do with healthcare, you’ve uncovered part of the reason why: Most medical professionals don’t even think about poor design as a problem. But it is.

Enter Stephen Klasko, an MD with an MBA, who is CEO of Jefferson Health System and Thomas Jefferson University, and Bon Ku, MD, a professor of emergency medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Ku runs a new program to turn less traditional medical students into innovative, creative problem-solvers, route them into medical school, and create a new type of physician trained to solve health care problems through design methodology. “Everything in healthcare is design,” says Ku.

Klasko and Ku joined the Knowledge@Wharton show on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM channel 111 to talk about why design is so important to health care’s future, and the unabashedly cool ways they intend to harness to force the medical profession to evolve. You can listen to the interview using the player above.

Listen to the conversation here.

An edited transcript of the conversation appears here.

Source: Knowledge@Wharton