HealthChangers

There's a shift happening in many industries toward placing a greater focus on the consumer, but what if you're not sure who those consumers are and what they want or expect? That's where human-centered design comes in. It's an approach where businesses research consumer habits, expectations and experiences, and then use what they learned to improve their services and improve the way they interact with those consumers.

In this edition of HealthChangers, we'll be taking a look at one example of how human-centered design is playing out in health care. My guest is Nancy Vuckovic from Cambia Health Solutions. She shares consumer research and human-centered design principles and how they can change the way people experience health care.

You might have heard of Iron Chef, the popular cooking show where the competition is based on secret ingredients. The Iron Viz competition is like that, but with health care data. There's often information buried within that data that can help in preventive care and in treating patients. But, the information is no use if people can't access it or share it in an understandable way.

The visual software company 'Tableau' pioneered one way to tackle these issues. Teams at Iron Viz are given data and are tasked to create a "viz," or visual, that can bring new insight to the data. Part of the idea is to have average people become a kind of "citizen data scientist." Our guests in this episode of HealthChangers have brought this idea, and Iron Viz, to health care.

For nearly a decade, the federal government has been trying to find ways to make medical records more accessible for Medicare and Medicaid clients. The initiative is known as Blue Button. Earlier this year, that initiative introduced a new version of Blue Button—Blue Button 2.0. It's now easier for Medicare patients to access their health care data and also to share it.

To get a better idea of what this transparency could mean for health care consumers, we spoke with Allison Oelschlaeger, Chief Data Officer at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services with the federal government, and Meg Dryer, the Vice President of Consumer Experience at Cambia.

When Peggy Maguire's father was diagnosed with lung cancer at 48 years old, it came as a complete shock to her family. They did everything they could to fight the disease, treating him with aggressive radiation and chemotherapy. However, they felt as if "his final days were very medical in nature" and felt residual guilt afterwards, wondering if there was something they could have done differently.

Peggy's experience has fueled her passion to improve awareness of what palliative care is and how it can change the way people living with serious illness - and their family caregivers - experience health care. In this interview with StoryCorps, Peggy shares her story with Dr. Tony Back from the University of Washington.

If you or someone you know is living with a chronic illness, it can feel like you never get a break. You have to track medications and monitor your symptoms, constantly worrying what will happen if you're alone when a health crisis hits. There is, however, a platform that is working to change all this. Livongo Health is a company with a solution designed to empower people with chronic conditions, so they can live healthier and better lives. In this episode of HealthChangers, we have a conversation with Livongo Health's CEO Glen Tullman and ask him what the inspiration was behind Livongo, a company committed to helping people with chronic conditions and also an investment company of Echo Health Ventures.

October 27th is National Prescription Drug Take Back . Turning in old medications ensures they're disposed of properly, but take back events can also prevent drug addiction and overdoses. The 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found a majority of abused prescription drugs came from family and friends' medicine cabinets.

In this episode of HealthChangers, we're taking a closer look at opioid abuse and the family and community work it takes to deal with this national crisis. Dr. Jim Polo, Behavioral Health Medical Director at Cambia moderated with a discussion at the Cambia Grove, a health care innovation in Seattle, and spoke with folks who've experienced opioid addiction, and recovery, first hand. Two regional experts, who are working directly with populations impacted by the opioid crisis, participated in the Conversation.

In this HealthChangers Podcast, Brodie shares how the health care industry continues to adapt, working to strengthen the quality of services and patient experience, through telehealth. His personal story of delivering his baby helped personify for him the work Cambia is doing to transform the health care consumer experience.

Millennials are the largest generation in the United States, and their influence continues to grow and be felt across industries. Health care is no exception. Traditional consumer health care experiences do not align with the mindsets, influences and habits of millennials —and health care brands must either adapt or be left behind.

In this episode, we meet with three millennials who are in different places in their professional lives, ranging from a college student an intern and a young professional, Rachel Day who is the host for today's show. They join Heather Burton, Director of Marketing for HealthSparq, who is working to empower people to make smarter health care choices based on their individual benefits. They will share their experience with health care and are representative of some of the most game-changing ways millennials interact with the health care system.

In this episode of HealthChangers, we bring you a panel discussion that followed the screening of the Netflix documentary 'End Game' with Dr. Pantilat and Dr. Ungerleider, led by Cambia Health Foundation president and board chair, Peggy Maguire and Mark Ganz, Cambia President and CEO.

This episode features a conversation between Rob Coppedge, Chief Executive Officer of Echo Health Ventures and Ben Albert, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Upfront Healthcare Services. Echo Health Ventures is Cambia's strategic investing arm to accelerate health care startups' growth and bring their innovations to scale nationally. Upfront Healthcare Services is an Echo Health Ventures portfolio company and enables patients to prepare for their appointments, while streamlining administrative operations for providers.