User-centered design may be a buzzword these days, but all too often healthcare still falls short when designing products, services, and care models that expand access for people with disabilities, as well as for disadvantaged and at-risk populations. It often boils down to bias. Whether conscious or not, the human tendency is to imagine that others have experience similar to our own.

Inclusive design tackles this challenge head-on by consulting a wide range of users during the design process to address the full spectrum of human diversity, including language, culture, gender, age, and other forms of human differences and social determinants. The result: products, services, and environments that are accessible and usable by everyone to the greatest possible extent.

In this session, a C4 quadriplegic and a digital- and consumer-design expert discuss the importance of going beyond what’s considered “normal” to create an inclusive healthcare system that delivers access to the greatest number of people. How do you design with empathy? Move beyond buzzwords and lip service and involve users in the design process? What are the barriers to inclusive design? In short, how do we make patients the primary stakeholders as healthcare shapes products and solutions for them? When it comes to transforming healthcare, this may be the most important question we have to answer.