Philosophy
Changing healthcare from the system up.
Most of the load on a clinical team comes not from how hard people work but from the way the work is set up. We treat the systems, the flow of the work, the handling of information and the training of people as one whole, so that clinical teams can concentrate on the work they are there to do. Three principles follow from that.
Three principles
1. Give medical time back to medicine
Recording, copying, paperwork and coordination are not the practice of medicine, nursing or care. We cut the time those tasks take by changing the system behind them, and returning that time to medicine is the purpose of everything we do. We judge a feature not by how impressive it sounds but by whether time comes back to the people doing the job.
2. Build what can be sustained
A system that looks impressive on launch day but cannot be kept running only adds to the load. We design on three conditions: that it fits the way the work is already done, that it still runs when the people change, and that it can be adjusted as its use evolves. We do not stop at delivery. Maintenance and operation stay with the same team.
3. Handle information with care
Mishandled medical and health information affects people’s lives directly. At every stage, from collection and storage to analysis and delivery, we hold no more than the work requires, and we handle what we hold strictly under the terms of our contracts and our privacy policy. Information that requires special care under Japanese law is treated with particular caution.
How we run a project
To put those principles into practice, we work in four stages, and at every stage we check what we are doing with the people who will use the result.
- See the work as it is. We go through the actual procedures, forms and handovers, find where the load has piled up, and share what we find with the team.
- Agree on the scope. We keep the first scope small, and we set out the cost and the timeline early rather than at the end.
- Build. We design so the result fits the existing routine, and we develop and roll out in short steps, confirming as we go.
- Keep it running. The same team handles maintenance and operation after launch and keeps adjusting as the use of the system evolves. When it makes sense, we widen the scope.