Healthcare and social care face multiple challenges – they are in urgent need of personnel while our demographics are changing and increasingly more people will receive care in the home. The global pandemic greatly underlined the need for a systemic transition in certain areas, as well as the importance of preparedness and the ability to implement rapid changes in the event of a crisis.
The need for quick decisions and triage is nothing new to the healthcare sector, but in the future, novel approaches to preparedness may prove necessary.
 

Flexible transition within industry

Within industry, there is talk of flexible transition, which is a concept based on adaptable production capabilities aided by digital solutions and public-private partnerships. This is an approach that could benefit healthcare and social care as well.

Collaborations between the public and private sectors were seen already during the pandemic.

“During the pandemic, when protective equipment ran out, it led to a systemic transition wherein industrial companies collaborated with healthcare to find the right materials and quickly scale up contingency production of protective equipment,” explains Katrin Skagert, whose research field is production and occupational health and safety.

Industry’s flexible preparedness is largely about being able to transition production from one product to another, an area in which there are growing opportunities to employ modern technologies such as 3D printing and AI. Within healthcare, however, other factors come into play.

“Within this field, personnel and competence are absolutely key. As are premises that can be adapted, such as by increasing or decreasing the floor space dedicated to, say, intensive care. Consumables supplies are required even in the event of a stop in the supply chains,” says Dag Sjöholm, a research and business developer within certification at RISE.

Some areas standardised – others more difficult

In some areas of industry, production is standardised to such an extent that it is possible to bring in completely new personnel who can quickly learn the job with the aid of clear visual instructions. This is an approach that has also been of some use within healthcare and social care but may be more difficult to apply in more complex care scenarios.
Whether standardised solutions can be used is largely dependent on where within care services they are to be employed.

“A great deal is already heavily standardised, such as certain healthcare processes, lab tests and how we use medications. But it’s difficult to do this when it comes to interacting with another person. And it’s difficult to use standardised instructions in a non-standardised environment, such as within home care. Every home is different, and each person home care staff come into contact with is a unique individual,” says Skagert.

Differences between sectors

There are, of course, significant differences between preparedness within industry and needs within healthcare and social care. One such difference is what is being produced – we can predict the end product of an industrial process and take a few steps back to make changes to that process.

“Healthcare, on the other hand, entails co-production between patient and personnel, a process that can be difficult to fully predict. So, when it comes to flexibility, it is innate to every step of the process as you are continually faced with different options for your next action,” says Skagert, and Sjöholm agrees.

“Within industry, the opposite is true as every end product should be identical.”

Another difference is how fast you can deploy personnel within production.

“Within healthcare, personnel are the most valuable resource. If we consider critical raw material shortages within industry, then within healthcare personnel are the equivalent resource. There is also a major difference when it comes to preparedness production. The specialist knowledge accumulated from the experience of interpreting people within healthcare and social care is difficult to rapidly scale up,” says Skagert.

Learn from each other

However, there are also lessons to be learned from industry’s approach to transition. Such as to make greater use of visual instructions within healthcare as well as to ensure a managerial presence within operations to check that the established procedures and instructions do in fact work in practice.

“It became clear in the preparedness production, but also later when the protective equipment was to be used in practice, that the instructions needed to be adjusted on the fly. Within industry, it is common practice to jointly look at, say, flows. I believe that the public sector also needs to do more, that those who govern and lead should ensure that the various instructions can actually be followed in practice, and for employees and managers to jointly consider how to make adjustments without risking the spread of infection, as in the case of Covid-19,” says Skagert.

As an example, at the beginning of the pandemic, the instructions for using protective equipment were drawn up within healthcare.

“The same instructions were spread to home care, which faced completely different conditions, such as where the protective equipment was to be kept by personnel, what kind of places there were to take it off and put it on, and where it could be disposed of without contaminating anything.”
 

RISE plays a key role

RISE has a key role to play in this work as it is involved in the entire process – from the development of methods and products, through CE marking, to instructions on how, for example, protective equipment should be handled and disposed of after use.

“One of RISE’s strengths is that we are well-versed in many areas, from production processes and materials to healthcare and social care. This provides us with a broad network, enabling us to play a supporting role in bringing together various functions and skill sets,” says Skagert.

“We are an independent party able to orchestrate all of this. And not only the production transition itself, as thanks to our knowledge about materials and our status as a certification body, we are also knowledgeable about product safety and, in the event of crisis, are able to together with the authorities offer a fast track without any detrimental effects on the associated risks,” says Sjöholm.

All you need to do is download any exercise app and, within a few minutes, you will come across what is referred to as gamification. The app will try to get you to exercise more by giving you rewards once you have passed certain goals, such as a star after completing your first five-kilometre run.

– “Simply put, gamification is when you apply ideas from games in everyday life, that is, using game mechanisms in non-game contexts,” says Vesselényi.

Direct feedback creates positive emotions

Even though most people know that exercise is good in the long run, you may not feel motivated right now, when it is cold or rainy or stressful at work. But with the help of gamification, the user can get direct feedback that they have accomplished something, and this in turn triggers positive emotions that create a willingness to continue towards the goal.

– “People are not just information beings, and although you may read that something is good for your health, it doesn’t mean you will automatically do it. Gamification can be a great way to stimulate the emotional commitment needed to really change behaviour.”

And this doesn’t just apply in private life, it can be just as effective in a workplace or in a customer relationship. But while gamification can be a powerful tool, it can create negative effects if used incorrectly.

– “If poorly implemented, gamification can even end up counteracting the desired behaviour. For example, if you offer a reward for an activity that did not have a reward previously, there is a risk that people will completely lose interest in the activity if the reward is removed later on.”

Charting behaviour that needs to change

Another risk is that poorly implemented gamification rewards the wrong behaviour. To avoid this and other pitfalls when working with gamification, and to get tips and ideas for new methods, opportunities and technical aids, it can be beneficial to enlist the help of an expert in game design. 

– “Every day, those of us working on this at RISE help organisations that want to learn more about gamification and how they can use it in their own operations.”

Among other things, researchers at RISE can help identify what behaviour actually needs to change, and chart how that behaviour relates to other behaviours and what effects a change can have.

– “We can also help evaluate whether gamification is the right tool for a particular organisation, or identify which parts would benefit from it and where it may not be quite as well suited.”

In most cases, there are always processes or behaviours that can be positively strengthened through gamification.

– “If people are only exposed to information, they easily filter it out because they can’t relate to it – it doesn’t awaken anything in them. But with the help of gamification, we can apply principles that arouse emotions and create commitment, and ensure that the change has a greater effect than could have been achieved otherwise.”