Design Criteria – Innovation & Design Thinking

Guiding Design Principles
Design Goal	A solution must be sustainable from a financial and social perspective People who face transportation problems cannot be defined as one specific demographic All users must be treated uniquely because there are many reasons why someone may lack access to transportation A solution must be flexible in order to cater to the needs of each specific user Functionally, solution must be able to deliver patient from point A to point B and back in an efficient and timely manner
User Perceptions	A solution to the transportation challenges of low income patients is very significant to their well being Patients often miss appointments due to lack of transportation and a solution would highly increase their health, the population health and well being The user wants the service to be cost effective as well as time efficient The service needs to be flexible in order to accommodate patients with children, work schedules as well as the need to stop other places to pick up prescriptions etc. There are no aesthetic aspects involves, but the vehicles should have minimal labeling as patients might not want to advertise to neighbors and others that they have transportation issues.
Problems, Needs, Opportunities	Problem- With such a large and diverse client population, SJHS struggles to provide transportation effectively to each of their clients Problem- It is difficult to provide a standardized transportation service that accommodates each patient’s unique needs Need- It appears SJHS will need to initiate a partnership with another organization to provide transportation Opportunity- utilize another organization’s vehicles for efficiency and to lower the burden on SJHS Opportunity- develop a partnership with a private company that provides personalized transportation for some type of compensation
Functional Attributes	A flexible service that can accommodate all kinds of patients and has transportation hours that work with different patient’s life schedules Standardize high quality of transportation service Transportation service needs to be able to help those patients who are immobile and perhaps in need of slight medical service just to leave his/her residency Transportation schedule must have times for patients who have work hours Understand that most of the target patients are elderly which means that there may need to be taught how to use certain technology if the transportation service uses an application or phone call system
Constraints	This project will be confined to only St. Joseph Health System patients and services. It will be confined to low income patients and patients with transportation issues. There are funding and staffing limitations as SJHS does not currently have a budget for transportation or receive federal funding. SJHS does not currently have any transportation capital such as vans or cars to use. There are legal limitations and liability issues as it pertains to using volunteers and assisting patients. This project must be able to handle a large capacity of patients with variable volume.