Setting our sights on the Nursing Home of the Future
With the current elder care system in peril and millions of babyboomers on their way to old age, the pressure is on to fundamentally redesign our country’s approach to elder care. The Business Innovation Factory’s Nursing Home of the Future (NHoF) initiative set out earlier this year to build a platform for experimentation where partners can design and test new ideas for improving elder care in a working nursing home / assisted living facility. It's been an amazing journey...
Working with Tockwotton Home, a 30-bed assisted living center and 42-bed skilled nursing facility located in Providence, Rhode Island and Quality Partners of Rhode Island, BIF assembled a team of designers, clinicians and elder care experts to activate the NHoF laboratory and embark on a first phase of work.
The NHoF team has completed the first phase of project activity and created a detailed description of the current experience of nursing home and assisted-living residents that illuminates the day-to-day dynamics of elder life and reveals areas of the experience ripe for redesign.
After hundreds of hours at Tockwotton Home, talking with residents and staff, participating in social events, meeting with families, interviewing experts and documenting with audio, video and photography, the NHoF team has synthesized their observations into a series of vignettes, videos and graphic tools that make it easier to understand the current experience and preview a set of opportunities for improving it.
Over the next few weeks the NHoF team will gear up for a Phase II of activity set to begin in January 2009. In Phase II, the team will leverage the work of Phase I to begin active experimentation with new products, services and systems for improving the elder experience.
Now is the opportunity for you to provide feedback. On every page of the NHoF lab site (just click on the “Feedback” tab) you can share your thoughts, suggestions, and ideas.
We look forward to hearing from you and hope you will keep in touch as BIF moves the NHoF lab into Phase II.
Watch the NHoF story presented at BIF-4 on October 15, 2008
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