Page 10 - Experience Based Co-design - a toolkit for Australia

In 2011 The King’s Fund developed an EBCD toolkit which is now hosted by the Point of Care Foundation.4 The toolkit with downloadable resources - including films of facilitators and participants providing lessons and tips - was updated in 2013, by incorporating learning from the growing international experience and includes several case studies. A key element of EBCD is the use of film to capture the patient narrative, which is subsequently edited and used as trigger material during co-design events. Early sites found this approach resource intensive. Others in the meantime tested the use of an existing archive of filmed patient/carer narratives in the process and found it to be effective and less resource intensive.5 They called it ‘accelerated’ EBCD (AEBCD).
In New Zealand, the approach has been supported by the Health Quality & Safety Commission who has run a Partners in Care co-design programme since 2012 based on the NHS Institutes experience based design programme. Fourteen of the nineteen DHBs in New Zealand and over 60 project teams have been involved. Waitemata District Health Board also host a health service co-design6 website.
Impact of EBCD
An increasing number of healthcare services worldwide are using the EBCD approach. Benefits described by users and proponents of EBCD include7:
(a) the value of patient and staff involvement in co-production processes
(b) the generation of ideas for changes to processes, practices and clinical environments (c) tangible service changes and impacts on patient experiences
There are other potential benefits that include:
from a patient perspective, improved satisfaction with the experience of care, reduction in complications associated with treatment and improved health outcomes8
from a staff and organisational perspective, the case for co-production may include improvements in staff well-being, increased recognition of the need for a better understanding of patient perspectives and changes in attitudes toward working with patients as partners in quality improvement.