Service design in the healthcare space with a special focus on non-clinical service departments: A synthesis and future directions.

Abstract

Although there has been a tremendous change in the way diseases are diagnosed and treated, the ways in which health care delivery has been managed has seen very little change.Several academic studies have arisen in the area of service design, but an amalgamation of this research, especially in the area of healthcare services is not available. The aim of this systematic review is to evaluate the published research on service design in healthcare and accordingly identify the gaps and scope of future research. After analyzing the articles and reviewing the Service design in healthcare literature, the following are our main contributions: (i) clarification of the service design concept and the developments that appears in the literature review of service design in the healthcare sector; (ii) classification of the service design tools and techniques that are most commonly used in the healthcare sector; (iii) demonstration of the service design as the preponderant construct that is used as a tool and technique to improve quality and efficiency in the healthcare service.The resultant systematic review reveals a change in the type of research carried out, the service design tools used and a shift towards service design from using the co-design tool to other methods. The paper highlights the gaps in the very limited amount of empirical work in the non-clinical healthcare space and accordingly a model is recommended.