Our Services
Teams throughout the University of Vermont Health Network sometimes get stuck on challenging, seemingly intractable, problems. People in the organization also have many great, yet unrealized ideas about how to make meaningful change in our health system. hiCOlab’s design and innovation methodology can help people get unstuck.There are several ways for individuals and teams to access hiCOlab’s services, ranging from 90-minute problem framing sessions to full-scale partnership projects.
Design Clinic
The hiCOlab Design Clinic is open to any individual or team within the organization. It’s an opportunity to meet with our team for 90 minutes, share an area for improvement, opportunity for innovation, challenging problem, or nascent idea, and then creatively explore together how to get unstuck.
We can help:
Explore the opportunity or problem and reframe it — through design thinking, visualization, and a human-centered approach.
Contextualize the current state of the opportunity or problem as part of the larger systems it lives in.
Uncover underlying issues, root causes, and roadblocks — barriers to change and the problem behind the problem.
Articulate the desired impact of working on this opportunity or solving the problem.
Develop next steps with concrete action items.
Teams walk away from a hiCOlab Design Clinic session with:
Clarity, optimism, and energy.
Recommendations for next steps.
More familiarity with the hiCOlab team and our methods.
Possible access to ongoing support from hiCOlab.
Your Commitment:
Design Clinic run for 90 minutes.
Visit the Design Clinic sign-up page or email Emilee.Hoffman@uvmhealth.org to schedule a session.
Design Sprint
The hiCOlab Design Sprint is an opportunity to work with our team on an intensive, week-long project to produce results quickly that can be tested in a real-world environment.
We can help:
See the problem differently and reframe it — through design thinking, visualization, and a person-centered approach.
Map the issues, talk with the experts, and determine a targeted goal.
Lead you through user-centered research with key stakeholders, looking at solutions from other organizations and industries to capture good ideas.
Brainstorm custom ideas and solutions based on what we’ve learned and decide on one to try!
Create a prototype solution and test it.
Synthesize learning and findings and create next steps for the team.
Teams walk away from a hiCOlab Design Sprint with:
A prototyped solution that can be put in practice and tested.
Recommendations for next steps.
Clarity, optimism, and energy.
More familiarity with the hiCOlab team and our methods.
Possible access to ongoing support from hiCOlab.
Your Commitment:
Defining and gaining commitment from a robust team of stakeholders to participate, with the appropriate leadership support.
Approximately 3 hours of pre-work to prepare for the sprint.
3-5 days of your team’s undivided attention from 8:30am-4pm.
To learn more about Design Sprints contact us.
Projects
hiCOlab partners with UVM Health Network teams on longer term projects that match our strategic aim of transforming healthcare services particularly in the area of population health. hiCOlab is committed to providing timely results with actionable insights and validated prototypes for solutions through a ten week design and innovation process.
Once the ten week project cycle is complete, hiCOlab to transfers the knowledge gained to our partners and identifies the important next steps. Additional opportunities for the work may include a second hiCOlab design and innovation cycle to further develop the project, a pilot program for implementation, and/or a more formal research study.
For more information, download “Partnering with hiCOlab,” a guide to how we work with teams to transform healthcare from the inside out.