Disney announced recently a $10M donation to build a new Children’s Hospital in Orlando including the help of Disney’s experiential design team to ensure a better patient experience. It’s been said that laughter is the best medicine so why has it taken so long for the medical field to embrace this concept? Oh yeah, Disney donated $10M (good for them).

This is a great example of cross-industry collaboration that will definitely impact the way patient care is delivered including the way buildings are layed out, what materials are chosen, which fabrics are selected (ie - Disney scrubs?), which devices are integrated and how data gets moved including how information is shared with the patient.

From the story at ‘the #1 site for Disney’, laughingplace.com:

“This partnership with Disney is blending our two areas of expertise: the healing hands of Florida Children’s Hospital and the imagination and creativity of Disney,” said Marla Silliman, administrator of Florida Children’s Hospital. “By bringing them together, we are creating an environment in which even the sickest children can experience joy and happiness while they are in the hospital.”

Sounds like medical research too if you called it “Patient-Centric Design for Effecting Patient Outcomes”. However, what I especially like about this is the tangible nature of it including the fact that they’ve already established dates for when we can expect it to open and all of the players necessary to realize the vision are already on board. Clearly, nobody doubts that there is a Disney team of experts who could totally transform a destination venue, including a hospital. Heck, they already transformed an airliner in collaboration with Alaska Airlines and Make-A-Wish Foundation. It’s also clear that Disney can afford to spend $10M to extend their brand into yet another industry.

So what happens when these kids go home and what could have been done better with a little bit of experiential design to keep the patient out of the hospital in the first place? The questions I’m left with is will the outpatient equivalent be made available soon and how does reimbursement work or hinder the availability of Disneyesque outpatient care models, devices and technology systems.

I have no doubt that we’ll see the outpatient equivalent of this effort and one focused on improving diabetes care? Who gets to use it will depend on insurance reimbursement on the one hand and a patient’s commitment and financial ability to get what they need on the other. Finally, which doctors will be the progressive early adopters willing to work with patients under these new models of care that you would have expected to see described at Epcot Center?

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 8:50 am and is filed under Automated Diabetes Management System, Behavioral, Clinical, Experiences, New Products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.