Piloting a New Service in a Healthcare Living Lab Environment – Case: Medified

Abstract

Social and health services are facing new challenges as digitalization is changing ways of working and job descriptions, bringing up needs for updating the healthcare professionals’ skills and know-how. Third parties, such as startups, are developing new digital services and solutions that are introduced to healthcare organizations. The purpose of this thesis is to improve the customer experience and the late-stage prototype of a new service in a public healthcare context. The development process aims to co-create incremental value for the service. It also aims to assess the service to support decision-making for the service’s implementation after the process. The thesis was commissioned by Medified Solutions Oy, a startup enterprise that has developed the new service. The service was piloted in a public healthcare organization’s Living Lab environment, which constituted the context for the thesis.

The theoretical framework of the thesis is comprised of the co-creation of value according to the service- and customer-dominant logics, the concept of customer experience and itsrelation to value and how to evaluate it. The framework also examines Living Labs as environments for innovation processes, and lean startup and service design as complementary development approaches. The theories supported the thesis by providing essential guidelines for the development process on the roles of the customer and the service provider. In addition, the principles of a Living Lab to achieve the goals of the pilot from different stakeholder’s perspectives and the characteristics of a holistic customer experience supported the thesis and the development of metrics for the service’s assessment. Finally, the complementary possibilities of two distinct development approaches provided perspectives on applying the development methodology.

The development was done by applying a customer-centric service design approach, which followed the principles of the Double diamond model and utilized and adapted service design methods: healthcare professionals’ in-depth interviews were conducted, analyzed, and reported to the client. Different co-creation and facilitation methods were used during the feedback sessions. Central problems and challenges were defined and re-framed and solutions were ideated. New feature and concept prototypes were developed, tested, and iterated in collaboration with the healthcare professionals. Continuous feedback was collected and analyzed, user stories were created, qualitative and quantitative evaluation metrics were developed, and the service concept was assessed.

The developed customer experience emphasized the healthcare professionals' needs and challenges and supported their activities by embedding the service to their context. Several service’s features, touchpoints, and channels were developed during the pilot. Visual communication materials, technical improvements, a deployment concept, and use scenarios were developed to improve the treatment process and the customer experience of the service. The applied development approach improved the service’s customer experience and the late-stage prototype. It benefited the client in supporting the service concept’s future pilots and implementations, improved the client’s design thinking model, and provided practical tools and methods to implement it. The thesis provides practical value to startups and similar actors developing and experimenting new services, the healthcare industry, and conducting pilots in Living Lab environments.