Report comment

Bob sounds like a real ambassador for patient-centred services and a really sad loss to the NHS. The big question is, how do you replace Bob and clone him to sit in every innovation discussion going on in the NHS? Well, obviously you can't do that, but there's lots that can be done. I love the example of Ester. What you're basically describing is a pen-portrait. These offer great ways of capturing a key customer demographic and focusing attention on them, but they can be a bit arbitrary. I've had many arguments about whether someone's aunt would use x,y,z services! I'd recommend developing personas for particular services - evidence based explorations of typical target service users. They really help galvanise a group around service design by focusing the debate down to something tangible.