There is a constant need to improve the public sector with services that promote sustainability, democracy, and citizen well-being. In this position paper, I will demonstrate how three design practices can help implement services to support this need.

New services have the potential to improve many parts of the public sector. While potentially beneficial, if not implemented, no impact is achieved. Several aspects must be considered to ensure the success of service implementations. When implementing a new IT service, for example, it is essential to involve the users and ensure that the implemented service matches the users' needs (Alidousti and Sahli, 2024). Additionally, there must be a willingness for change among the users and ownership of the new service (Cunningham and Kempling, 2009).

Improving social systems governed by public sector organizations, which contain stakeholders with conflicting interests and perspectives, can be regarded as “ill-defined” or “wicked” problems (Rittel and Webber, 1973; Buchanan, 1992). To address such problems, a solution must be created without being sure that it will be a good match to the problem. This is called a “creative leap” and can be seen as building a bridge between problem and solution (Cross, 1982). Designers have been argued to be capable of addressing such problems and making this leap (Buchanan, 1992).

Two additional design practices that have the potential to contribute to implementation in complex systems are co-design and prototyping. Co-design enables users and other stakeholders to share their perspectives and to be a part of creating the change, which can improve the fit between the solution and the user (Steen et al., 2011). Prototyping, on the other hand, can help to create a common language among stakeholders and test future scenarios (Blomkvist and Segelström, 2014).

In summary, I argue that the following three design practices can contribute to service implementation in the public sector:

(1) Making the “creative leap” from problem to solution.
(2) Co-designing the service implementation to address needs and create ownership.
(3) Creating and using prototypes to align stakeholders and discuss future scenarios.

Using these design practices during implementation can potentially increase the impact of new services, by creating a better fit between service and context. Positioning design practitioners as implementors can also help strengthen the case for building design capacity in the public sector.

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Challenges in implementing digital health in clinical practice hinder its potential. The complexities posed by implementation could benefit from using design practices. To explore the current role of design practices in digital health implementation, designers in the Netherlands were interviewed. The preliminary results indicate that designers contribute to digital health implementation processes, especially in the early stages. Design practices are mainly used for engaging the users, testing concepts, aligning the ideas of stakeholders, and adapting interventions to fit within the contexts.

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Background:
Neonatal intensive care unit admissions of newborns are emotional and stressful for parents, influencing their mental and physical well-being and resulting in high rates of psychological morbidities. Significant research has been undertaken to understand and quantify the burden of a newborn’s medical journey on parents’ well-being. Simultaneously, an increase has been observed in the development and implementation of telemedicine interventions, defined as the remote delivery of health care. Telemedicine is used as an overarching term for different technological interventions grouped as real-time audio-visual communication, remote patient monitoring, and asynchronous communication. Various telemedicine interventions have been proposed and developed but scarcely with the primary goal of improving parental well-being during their newborn’s medical journey.

Objective:
This study aims to identify telemedicine interventions with the potential to improve parents’ well-being and to present the methods used to measure their experience.

Methods:
A scoping review was conducted, including empirical studies evaluating telemedicine in neonatal care that either measured parental well-being or included parents in the evaluation. Abstract and title screening, full-text screening, and data extraction were performed by three researchers. Two researchers were needed to reach decisions on both the inclusion and extraction of articles.

Results:
The review included 50 out of 737 screened articles. Telemedicine interventions focused mainly on daily visits at the neonatal intensive care unit and discharge preparedness for parents. Surveys were the primary tool used for outcome measurement (36/50, 72%). Aspects of parents’ well-being were evaluated in 62% (31/50) of studies. Telemedicine interventions developed to provide education and support showed a potential to improve self-efficacy and discharge preparedness and decrease anxiety and stress when they included a real-time telemedicine component.

Conclusions:
This scoping review identified specific telemedicine interventions, such as real-time audio-visual communication and eHealth apps, that have the potential to improve parental well-being by enhancing self-efficacy and discharge preparedness, and reducing anxiety and stress. However, more insights are needed to understand how these interventions affect well-being. Parents should be included in future research in both the development and evaluation stages. It is important to not only measure parents’ perceptions but also focus on the impact of a telemedicine intervention on their well-being.@en