Initially, the vision for the Cancer Wellness Initiative (CWI), established by Princess Alexandra Hospital’s (PAH) Cancer Services, was to establish a physical centre where wellness programs and support could be delivered. However, when the sudden and unexpected wide-spread shift towards online modalities occurred in 2020, the team needed to reimagine the service delivery model to meet the wellness needs of people with cancer at the PAH without the ability to provide in-person care.
Given the over-abundance of cancer information online, conflicting advice and potential to lead people down online rabbit holes, the team wanted to create an authoritative, evidence-based, virtual home for PAH patients seeking wellness information, programs and services.
Multiple workshops were run by the Cancer Wellness Initiative prior to the engagement with the Healthcare Improvement Unit and Queensland University of Technology's Healthcare Excellence AcceLerator (HEAL), which had begun to scaffold ideas for the initial service design, ensuring a truly collaborative design process throughout.
The collaboration between HEAL and the CWI involved four phases: Mapping, Visualising, Co-designing and Evaluating. First, the team imagined their outcomes and mapped out the future of the service. It was immediately clear that the team needed to re-connect with end-users – people with cancer and patients at the PAH – to better understand how their current and emerging needs could be met with an online offering.
