Season 1 Episode 3: Design Thinking for Healthcare - An Interview with David McDonald

David McDonald is a healthcare anthropologist and entrepreneur and the CEO and co-founder of LIFT a research and design agency focused on patient engagement and empowerment. His firm helps healthcare and life science companies better understand the people they seek to serve by approaching product marketing and patient education & empowerment through a human-centered lens. 

In June, he published his first book, What’s Their Story? Anthropology, Design Thinking, and the Rebirth of Healthcare Marketing. 

The value of a patient-centered approach to healthcare design and strategy is clear, yet many healthcare professionals lack a fundamental understanding of the principles that foster stakeholder understanding important to better outcomes, clinically and economically. In this book, David McDonald shares insights imperative to illuminating patient realities and designing impactful patient experiences. Without the concepts presented in this book, healthcare professionals genuinely interested in the human condition are flying blind. 

There has never been a better time to define context around what it means to advocate on behalf of the patient. In this timely book, McDonald illuminates the biopsychosocial model and tackles the value of design and anthropology in patient education and empowerment—bringing an important conversation to the forefront with fresh and compelling perspectives. You’ll learn a brief history of the patient-centered concept and begin to understand two important tools that fuel stakeholder understanding: anthropology and design thinking.