Wall Street Journal reporter Laura Landro’s recent interview with a front-line doctor underscores why we need more meaningful ways to measure quality. Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Victor Montori, who specializes in treating people with chronic illnesses, says health care systems and doctors are not being rewarded for preventing disease and instead pressured to satisfy measures that mean little for patients or health.

We’ve got design on our minds — from the design of health care’s physical environment to the design of the patient-provider interaction. We know all play a role in improving patient safety, the quality of care and even health outcomes.

To expand our understanding of design and to meet innovators who are putting their ideas into action, the Pioneer team has been sponsoring conferences, like the Mayo Clinic’s Transform, and attending others, like the GAIN—the AIGA Design for Social Value Conference or the Healthcare Experience Design conference, which I attended last week.

What is most intriguing to me about design — in realm of health care and more broadly — is how the ideas about how to do it right mirror our thinking about health care in general: it needs to be centered on the patient, both their needs and their unique experiences.

One look at the latest flu map from the Centers for Disease Control tells you everything you need to know: We are smack-dab in the middle of flu season. Make no mistake: Influenza, at best, can make you miserable—and, at worst, kill you. If you are one of the many Americans suffering from the flu this season, you will probably try anything to get relief from your sore throat, high fever, body aches, and chills. But do us a favor: Please don’t ask your doctor for an antibiotic. There are medications—called antivirals—that may decrease your symptoms and shorten your illness by a day or two. Antibiotics, however, won’t help you if you have the flu. 

Antibiotics don’t fight infections that are caused by viruses, including influenza. Yet every year flu sufferers are prescribed antibiotics. According to a policy brief from Extending the Cure (ETC), a project funded by the Pioneer team, that researches and examines solutions to address antibiotic resistance, between 500,000 and 1 million antibiotic prescriptions are filled each flu season for patients who have the flu and no bacterial illness.

Health care is one of life’s most basic needs. It’s so simple. In recent years, though, the subject of health care has also served to polarize our nation. We all need it, but who’s responsible for making sure we get it? How do we ensure it’s safe, high-quality care? What about cost? Vocal, contentious debate over the answers to these questions—and many more—continues unabated in the United States. Meanwhile, in my work as a volunteer nurse at a clinic for the uninsured, I see patients who continue to lack the means to get even the most basic of care, who struggle with chronic disease in a system that seems to throw up obstacles at every turn.

That’s the bad news.

Here’s the good news: Amidst the unproductive noise, countless innovators from all walks of life are quietly going about the work of solving some of the most intractable problems in health and health care. 

Last week, I had a flashback to a Saturday night in 2010, when I was in my last semester as a second-career nursing student.

It was a beautiful spring night and my family was gathered around a bonfire in the backyard. I, on the other hand, was sitting at the kitchen table, still in my scrubs. My laptop open, I was staring at the blinking cursor. As usual, I was struggling to finish my “patient database”—my school’s version of a nurse’s note about what happened, clinically, with my assigned patient that day:

1430: Patient received drowsy but AOx3. MAE, equal strength. Primary nurse reports patient requires one-person assist OOB to chair; patient not OOB this shift. PERRLA. Skin is warm & dry, no bruising noted. IV site (20 g left outer forearm) is clean, dry and intact; no pain or erythema noted. Capillary refill <3 sec. Heart sounds audible and regular. Radial and pedal pulses present & equal bilaterally. No edema noted. RR 16, unlabored. SAO2 94% on room air…