One year ago Hawkins Pham’s infant daughter underwent open-heart surgery in Vietnam. Gratefully she is now ‘healthy and happy.’
The experience Hawkins and his family encountered across all elements of the healthcare industry brought into stark and heart-breaking focus “the many inequities that the majority of Vietnamese face getting access to care.”
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And so, Hawkins asked himself “Where can I be at the source of change? How can I help other families that might experience the same journey? How can we reimagine healthcare in Vietnam?”
Answering these questions set in motion Doodle Design, Mekong Capital and YCP Solidiance to co-create Reimagining Healthcare, through human centered design to bring together leading practitioners from across the healthcare industry to rethink how we might improve access to quality care.
The stakeholders’ aim was to demonstrate how a patient-centric approach in a multi-stakeholder, workshopping forum could effectively innovate access to quality care in Vietnam.
With the aid of Design Thinking Mindsets, Methods, imagination, enthusiastic participation from 40+ healthcare professionals, and a healthy dose of empathy — and hundreds of Post-It notes— 432 ideas were sparked through workshopping together.
The participants then voted to identify and prioritize “9 Big Ideas”. Further online collaboration was invited to help iterate and phase best-fit solutions.
You can download the white paper to understand the process and the concluding ideas, some of which are now being realized in real time as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic from this link.
To quote Hawkins Pham. “As we move forward, we hope that this white paper is just the end of the beginning of an ongoing journey to continually Reimagine Healthcare in Vietnam. To discover how you might get involved with improving access to quality care, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Our intention is to transform these ideas into reality, and we would welcome your participation.”

Chris Elkin, Founder at Doodle Design
“This white paper is living evidence of the power of Design Thinking, especially a sincerely empathetic mindset. Together we can impact and change lives through better quality healthcare in Vietnam.” Chris Elkin, Founder, Doodle Design said.