The Thinking Healthcare System

This book is a primer focusing on systems thinking as it spans the domains of health administration, public health, and clinical practice. Currently, the accrediting commissions within public health, health administration, and nursing are including systems thinking as part of the core competencies in their respective fields and professions. Meanwhile, academic programs do not have the materials, other than journal articles, to give students the requisite understanding of systems thinking as is expected of the next generation of health professionals. This primer is designed to meet that void and serve as a supplemental reading for this important and timely topic. This is the only book of its kind that provides a broad introduction and demonstration of the application of health systems thinking.

The Thinking Healthcare System: Artificial Intelligence and Human Equity is the first comprehensive book detailing the historical, global, and technical trends shaping the evolution of the modern healthcare system into its final form—an AI-driven thinking healthcare system, structured and functioning as a global digital health ecosystem. Written by the world’s first triple doctorate trained physician-data scientist and ethicist, and author of three AI textbooks and over 350 scientific and ethics papers, this indispensable resource makes sense of how technology, economics, and ethics are already producing the future’s health system—and how to ensure it works for every patient, community, and culture in our globalized, digitalized, and divided world. Providing clear descriptions and concrete examples, this book brings together AI-accelerated digital health ecosystems, data architecture, cloud and edge computing, precision medicine, public health, telemedicine, patient safety, health political economics, multicultural global ethics, blockchain, and quantum health computing, among other topics. Healthcare and business executives, clinicians, researchers, government leaders, policymakers, and students in the fields of healthcare management, data science, medicine, public health, informatics, health and public policy, political economics, and bioethics will find this book to be a groundbreaking resource on how to create, nourish, and lead AI-driven health systems for the future that can think, adapt, and so care in a manner worthy of the world’s patients. Details the first comprehensive, global, and multidisciplinary analysis of the AI-driven transformation of modern healthcare systems into their definitive digitalized form that will dominate the future Provides clear descriptions and concrete examples of AI-informed value-based healthcare, digital health ecosystems, data architecture, cloud and edge computing, precision medicine, public health, telemedicine, patient safety, health political economics, multicultural and embedded global ethics, blockchain, AI security, health security, digital twins, and quantum health computing Serves as a practical blueprint, roadmap, and system DNA for creating the future’s healthcare system that integrates efficiency and equity to accelerate the treatment (and in some cases even cures) for some of our world’s most urgent, immediate, and impending global health challenges and crises

Many developing countries are looking to scale-up what works through major systems strengthening investments. With leadership, conviction and commitment, systems thinking can facilitate and accelerate the strengthening of systems to more effectively deliver interventions to those in need and be better able to improve health in an equitable way. Systems thinking is not a panacea. Its application does not mean that resolving problems and weaknesses will come easily or naturally or without overcoming the inertia of the established way of doing things. But it will identify, with more precision, where some of the true blockages and challenges lie. It will help to: 1) explore these problems from a systems perspective; 2) show potentials of solutions that work across sub-systems; 3) promote dynamic networks of diverse stakeholders; 4) inspire learning; and 5) foster more system-wide planning, evaluation and research. And it will increase the likelihood that health system strengthening investments and interventions will be effective. The more often and more comprehensively the actors and components of the system can talk to each other from within a common framework --communicating, sharing, problem-solving -- the better chance any initiative to strengthen health systems has. Real progress will undoubtedly require time, significant change, and momentum to build capacity across the system. However, the change is necessary -- and needed now. This report therefore speaks to health system stewards, researchers and funders and maps out a set of strategies and activities to harness these approaches, to link them to these emerging opportunities and to assist systems thinking to become the norm in design and evaluation of interventions in health systems. But, the final message is to the funders of health system strengthening and health systems research who will need to recognize the potential in these opportunities, be prepared to take risks in investing in such innovations, and play an active role in both driving and following this agenda towards more systemic and evidence-informed health development.

Employing critical-systems thinking, this study analyses the evolution of a health system providing universal coverage.

Patient safety in health systems has become more and more important as a theme in health research, and so it is not surprising to see a growing interest in applying systems thinking to healthcare. However there is a difficulty – health systems are very complex and constantly adapting to respond to core drivers and fit needs. How do you apply systems thinking in this situation, and what methods are available? National health authorities, international donors and research practitioners need to know the “how-to” of conducting health systems research from a systems thinking perspective. This book will fill this gap and provide a range of tools that give clear guidance of ways to carry out systems thinking in health. These methodologies include: System dynamics and causal loops Network analysis Outcome mapping Soft systems methodology Written by an international team of experts in health research, this handbook will be essential reading for those working in or researching public health, health policy, health systems, global health, service improvement and innovation in practice.

​​​​This book looks at health policy through the lens of public versus private: population health versus the somatic, social, or emotional experiences of a patient. Rather than presenting policy/ethics as overly technical, this book takes a novel approach of framing public and private health in terms of political philosophy, ethics, and popular examples. Each chapter ties back to the general ethics or political literature as applicable, which are not customarily parts of the current public health curriculum. The author's work on the Orgcomplexity blog has touched on this subject by systemically exploring public policy issues, and the tone of this book mimics the blog with an extension of the arguments.

A practice-based guide to applying the principles of human-centered design to real-world health challenges; updated and expanded with post–COVID-19 innovations. This book offers a practice-based guide to applying the principles of human-centered design to real-world health challenges that range from drug packaging to breast cancer detection. Written by pioneers in the field—Bon Ku, a physician leader in innovative health design, and Ellen Lupton, an award-winning graphic designer—the book outlines the fundamentals of design thinking and highlights important products, prototypes, and research in health design. This revised and expanded edition describes innovations developed in response to the COVID-19 crisis, including an intensive care unit in a shipping container, a rolling cart with intubation equipment, and a mask brace that gives a surgical mask a tighter seal. The book explores the special overlap of health care and the creative process, describing the development of such products and services as a credit card–sized device that allows patients to generate their own electrocardiograms; a mask designed to be worn with a hijab; improved emergency room signage; and a map of racial disparities and COVID-19. It will be an essential volume for health care providers, educators, patients, and designers who seek to create better experiences and improved health outcomes for individuals and communities.

v. 1. Research findings -- v. 2. Concepts and methodology -- v. 3. Implementation issues -- v. 4. Programs, tools and products.