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We design health care solutions for humans.
We believe
The biggest opportunities to transform healthcare lie not within strategies or processes, but mindsets.
People come to us with complicated problems that have no clear solution and sit squarely in the grey zone of right and wrong.
Our essence
We use design thinking to kick start meaningful discussions, breathe life into structures with human-centered design and develop co-designed solutions to capture hearts.
Our lab sits within Alberta Health Services, which provides health and care services to 4 million people in the province of Alberta, Canada.
We facilitate
The AHS Design Lab uses design thinking as a core foundation. That means we tap into abilities and viewpoints that are often overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices.
We recognize patterns to help groups come up with creative ideas that are meaningful and focused on the end user.
Would you like us to run a design day, a health sprint or help you work through a hairy problem? GET IN TOUCH
We educate
D4AHS offers courses that harness design thinking into tools like sprints, scrums, and liberating structures.
Check our RESOURCES page for courses that we offer.
We mobilize
There's increasing recognition that social movements offer an alternative and effective option to the 'top-down' approaches traditionally used in organizations.
If you have a social movement you want to spread, we can help.
Our manifesto
We can wait for change to happen or we can
MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN
Pilots belong in planes, we need to
TEST MORE AND FAIL FASTER
Organizational charts work in straight lines but
CREATIVITY & INNOVATION COME FROM ALL DIRECTIONS
Same mindset = same action = same result
TAKE RISKS, EXPERIMENT AND EMBRACE FAILURE
Strategies & frameworks alone won't solve complex, adaptive challenges
REAL WORLD PROBLEMS REQUIRE ACTIONABLE ANSWERS
No one has all the answers
CO-CREATE SOLUTIONS WITH THE PEOPLE WHO NEED THEM MOST
What people say
Michael Auld; MD
"The Design Lab brought compassion, patient centredness, and effective collaboration all to one place. They helped us get all the stakeholders in a room for engaged planning.
We ended up with some concrete pitches to address an important problem that is not easy to solve... providing better health services to mothers dealing with addictions."
Joni McNeely;
Wheatland and Area Hospice Society Member
“As a result of working with the Design Lab, more hospice societies came to the table, became involved, and felt a sense of empowerment.
In my 26 years of being a physician, I’ve never seen a group like this come in and shake things up.”
Linda French; Chief Privacy Officer AHS
"We have a new approach, a team with defined roles, a tool to track the work, a plan for the first planning session next week and initial ideas loaded in as the project backlog.
We have commitment. We have optimism. We are excited to start working in this new way.
We are extremely appreciative."