9月30日

Designing Doctors

The Mayo clinic’s experimental lab is leading to new designs for health care facilities

Exploring problems

Mayo’s physicians both embrace design principles and integrate them with traditional medical research. Doctors or managers propose a problem or a question they want to explore, and the SPARC staff assembles a cross-functional team, which gets a crash course on design methodology. By “the second hour, we were out with cameras, notepads and tape recorders,” says Becky Smith, a manager in patient education. Her team discovered that Mayo’s main education center was confusing. It was intended for patients and family members to learn more about diagnoses or treatments. But because the space was open—no walls or doors—patients weren’t sure if the computers were for them or the Mayo staff.

Finding solutions

After researching user needs on the Mayo campus, study groups typically reconvene in the SPARC lounge to share observations, ideally in the form of stories: how patients checked in, how they learned about treatment options and so on. The goal is to explain how and why people behave the way that they do, to uncover the short cut around a problem. Then the brainstorming begins. Whiteboard walls get papered with sticky notes and possible solutions. Finally, it’s on to prototypes.

Already, SPARC’s reach is expanding. What began a couple of years ago as an intriguing but modest concept was named one of the Mayo Clinic’s top priorities last year. SPARC’s full-time staff has grown from two to six. There are a half-dozen projects going on, and the number of workshop participants is 500 and counting. SPARC is catching on, winning traction—and, hopefully, sparking Mayo’s next whirl of innovation.

Specialized Terms

Diagnosis (n) 诊断结果 a judgment about what a particular illness is, made after an examination

Vocabulary Focus

Crash course (n) a rapid and intense course of training

Reconvene (v) to come together again

Brainstorming (n) a group problem-solving technique in which members sit together and suggest a lot of ideas regarding a particular matter

Discussion Question

Do you think brainstorm is the best way to solve problems? What’s the disadvantage?

Extra Exercise

1. Translate the following sentence into Chinese, ‘What began a couple of years ago as an intriguing but modest concept was named one of the Mayo Clinic’s top priorities last year.’

2. According to the recording, what does embrace mean in today’s article?

说明：

1.文本摘自《Advanced 彭蒙惠英语》，由chandler30亲自录入。更多节目可访www.studioclassroom.com

2.回帖内容为大家讨论类话题，如非个人隐私，请不要选中“只有楼主可见”，以便大家交流。

3.参考答案在二楼，回复可见。

4.参与讨论问题奖励50沪元，回答问题奖励50沪元，本栏目谢绝灌水!