HXD 2022 Call for Speakers is now open!

Are you a designer? A provider? An innovator? An advocate? All are welcome at the Health Experience Design Conference, a diverse community practitioners and leaders in design, innovation, research, strategy, and technology, dedicated to accelerating the transformation of our health care system.

What is HXD?
The annual HXD conference provides a unique crossroads for a diverse community of practitioners and leaders in design, innovation, research, strategy, and technology to help accelerate the transformation of our health care system. Mad*Pow founded the Health Experience Design Conference in 2010. Since that time it has become the leading conference advocating for person-centered experience innovation in health. Attracting over 500 visionaries across the health ecosystem, this two-day mix of inspiring presentations, workshops, and discussion drives real world change.

Logistics

  • To apply submit the CFP form on the next page
  • The deadline to apply is January 21, 2022
  • This year’s conference will be held April 11 & 12, 2022 in Boston, MA.
  • CFP decisions will be released February 7, 2022
  • The audience will include a mix of designers, professionals from the health industry, researchers, and others.
  • Talks will be delivered in 30 minute sessions including 15-20 minutes for the talk and 10 minutes for Q&A.
  • Speakers will receive free attendance to both days of the conference.
  • We hope to be in person for the 2022 event and are proceeding as if we will be but we reserve the right to pivot to virtual as the ever evolving COVID-19 pandemic demands.
  • If you require travel reimbursement, please let us know. We have a limited travel budget and can work 1:1 with select speakers to make sure they are able to attend.
  • To apply submit the CFP form on the next page

Should I submit?
We welcome submissions from anyone with advice, experience, and best practices to share. Our 2022 HXD Conference theme is Designing for Change. We are accepting speaker submissions on these topics:

Evolving Design and Innovation Practices

As we continue to navigate public health crises as well as shifts in the job market, many design and innovation teams have had to evolve how they are providing value – both to their organizations and to their employees. In order to become more responsive, adaptable, and agile, teams have had to adjust their processes, pivot on their priorities, and make space for new ways of working. How have organizations successfully adjusted their design and innovation practices to accommodate these shifts? In our Evolving Design and Innovation Practices track at HXD 2022, we will share first-hand stories of the successes, challenges, and practical take-aways that teams within the healthcare industry have encountered as they’ve worked to overcome the challenges we’ve faced over the last few years.

Equity by Design: Designing with Communities

With Covid impacting the planet — healthcare, public health, and population health have been challenged to reimagine and strengthen their approaches to the most immediate needs as well as mid-to-long term care. As businesses, non-profits, and government organizations continue to engage in this work, the Design industry is beginning to recognize the importance of designing “with” rather than “for” communities—especially marginalized, underrepresented, and vulnerable ones. In this track, we will discuss how designers are empowering community experts to help us develop better health outcomes through co-design, participatory design, and systems design. Topics we will cover:

  • Social Determinants of Health
  • Trauma-Informed Design
  • Community-Led Health
  • Racism in Design
  • Health Equity
  • Participatory Design
  • Designing for Rare and Orphaned Diseases

Innovation in Life Sciences

The Pandemic has forced life sciences companies to stretch, adapt, and change under extreme circumstances . Achieving successes ranging from record-fast vaccine development to getting drugs to patients facing pandemic-driven financial hardship, required innovation within and across businesses, demonstrating that meaningful change is possible even within the confines  of the restrictive regulatory environments and deeply ingrained corporate cultures. While user-centered design is often thought of of in the context of patient experience, these pandemic-era innovations have demonstrated that opportunities exist across the business from drug discovery to the regulatory review process to patient support.  This track will highlight best practices for driving this rapid innovation and dive deep on the less obvious places where design thinking could make a big difference.

Improving Member Experiences

Health insurance companies want to play a greater role in the managing the health of the their members to improve outcomes and reduce cost, and in many cases are being pressured to do so as CMS continues to drive capitation and value based payments in federally-funded programs. This evolution from a healthcare finance company to a health management company requires a member-centric view to be truly successful, a view that  traditional health insurance companies weren’t built around. This track focuses on the monumental of task transforming legacy organizational and technology infrastructures to fully support and create better member-centric experiences that engender trust and effectively drive behavior change that improves outcomes.

Humanizing Healthcare Experiences with Emerging Technologies

There is a breadth of new technology solutions arising to manage care remotely, supplement or augment human-delivered care with digital therapeutics, and optimize efficiency in customer service. Emerging technologies offer great promise to positively impact health outcomes from prevention to the effective management of chronic conditions. How can organizations leverage emerging technologies to improve quality of life in thoughtful, creative ways? How might we reimagine health experiences by framing these technologies as design problems? And how does an organization do any of these without inadvertently introducing bias or exacerbating inequity? This track will dig deep on these emerging technologies: identifying the opportunities and pitfalls, learning how best to ensure that inclusivity is central to innovation, and understanding how these new technologies can help us reimagine healthcare in the future.

Health Experiences that Heal & Empower

What is the future of healthcare experiences? During this track, we will explore healthcare through the lens of impactful experiences, across healthcare and across industry stakeholders. From a person and caregiver managing a condition, to clinicians facing massive caseloads and administrative tasks – all of whom share an inherent risk for burnout and compassion fatigue. We will reflect on current experience shortcomings, stories from those who leverage human-centered design to facilitate change, and consensus building in organizations toward a common vision of systemic change.  How might we reimagine the whole experience, where healing and empowerment are at the forefront of healthcare delivery? What are unique and innovative methods to reach people where they are and truly understand the needs of those we serve? We will uncover crucial elements for tailoring experiences and identifying solutions that resonate across stakeholders. Topics include:

  • service design
  • participatory design and co-creation focused on healing and empowerment
  • the design of the physical or built environment
  • patient empowerment and self-efficacy
  • healing for caregivers (informal and professional)
  • decision support
  • digital front door efforts
  • wayfinding
  • anxiety reduction
  • integrative medicine

Designing for Optimal Mental Health

The US is experiencing a severe shortage of mental health professionals, and the pandemic has exacerbated an already acute mental health crisis, particularly in younger and underserved populations. Designing for optimal mental health is critical—from employers designing return-to-work strategies, to health systems and clinicians dealing with an increased patient need for mental health care, to companies developing solutions to help overcome the shortage of treatment professionals. This intense, immediate need for sustainable mental healthcare has created an opportunity to empower individuals to take charge of their own mental health through solutions that apply design thinking, health literacy and behavioral science to meet them where they’re at. This track will examine all aspects of enhancing mental health care through human-centered design.

The Science of Behavior Change

Behaviors are among the most important factors that influence health. Our attempts to improve the health of those who are ill (e.g., initiating and adhering to treatments), those who are well (e.g., stopping smoking) and those who deliver care (adhering to evidence-based guidelines) all depend on behavior change. Designing (more) effective behavior change interventions requires more than just intuition and creativity, it requires the application of behavioral science – its theories, its methods and its evidence through every phase of the design process. This track will feature relevant talks focused on underlying theories and techniques from behavior change science and how they can be applied to the design and evaluation of digital and mixed-mode interventions.

To apply submit the CFP form on the next page

Questions? Contact Ryan Queenan, Mad*Pow Marketing Director.