Celebrate mistakes, not hide them!

It is just over a year ago that I wrote my last blogpost… A YEAR!!! In Internet terms, a year is more like a century. So, I just got one hundred years older and I want to let you know, I am still here! This post is about what I have learnt by making mistakes, by failing and how I decided to kill my first idea I wrote about on this blog. It is also about celebrating mistakes, and not hide them! Read on if you are still interested…

Start working on a healthcare idea so broadly scoped that it can be used by the masses, is difficult to execute. It can be done in too many ways that don’t encourage fast decision making on what the software should do. Focus on a specific existing need of a niche, the Internet is about niches.

Work on a healthcare innovation from outside a healthcare organization is a lot tougher than I thought. Listening to patients and knowing what they want is one, but then implementing it in such a fashion that professionals who work in healthcare want to work with your solution as well, appears to be far more difficult. User benefits vs professionals’ benefits – who do you serve in the end and why?

Then, it is critical to find people who believe what you believe who have enough expertise to actually help you build it. People who are experts in their field of software development. Building solid software which is a joy to use is a modern craft. That is another thing I learnt last year. Creating software is a craft that requires an equal investment from different expertise fields. You need all of them, not just only the code. You need a visual design, an interaction design, code that serves one or more (mobile) platforms, a server-side specialist and someone who can build a website and a web app. The most difficult part: work together to build good software.

Since then I have changed some things. I missed working in a team. I still wanted to help making healthcare a better experience for people. So, I had to find an innovative team to work with who are linked to a healthcare organization. I had to look for a healthcare organization that believed what I believed. Look for a team agile and willing to listen to patients. That is what I found at the Radboud REshape and Innovation Center, part of the UMC St Radboud in Nijmegen.

Since october of 2010 I work in that team to listen to patients and to improve their hospital experience. I develop prototypes of new services that facilitate patients to participate more in their own treatment. By doing so, we create movement in the hospital. Healthcare is not rusty and stiff: we CAN change things for the better. It has been a blast so far and I have learnt a great deal about people, the power of listening and developing useful services by doing that.

I had to let go of my idea of social healthcare in which people could monitor all kinds of parameters from their own body, like weight, blood pressure, blood sugar and so on. Meanwhile, solid and interesting software products have come to the market that let you do just that. Not so much do they have social sharing of those measurements, but that is just a matter of time, I am sure. What was wrong with the execution of the idea then? Too broadly scoped, not linked to a healthcare organization, good expertise in the team, but still roles/expertise missing. Network not yet wide enough to find software building expertise in.

In the coming posts I will tell you what I have been doing over the last months and it may not come as a surprise that I have picked up a new idea. Smaller scope, explicit offering to a niche, developed with help of patients and support of an innovative academic hospital and with a great team of experts in software development.

Let’s see if this time it will take off! I am not afraid to fail, the things I learnt from failing with my first idea are priceless. I now know much better what to pay attention to in starting up a new idea, what works and what not, what people I need to look for and what people I want to work with, how to inspire people and how to bring joy to someone’s life. Making mistakes is what makes me grow. I have embraced it with all I have. Let’s celebrate mistakes, not hide them! Cheers!