In healthcare, the promise of technology is clear: reduce pressure on staff, improve patient outcomes and scale efficiently across services. And yet, for those working on the frontline, the reality often falls short. Technology, despite its potential, is too often abandoned or underused.

So, why do so many solutions miss the mark?

This was the driving question at Liquid's most recent Future Led event, co-hosted with the Clinical Skills Development Service (CSDS), Metro North Health at CSDS’s cutting-edge simulation facility in Brisbane’s Herston Quarter.

The panel featured clinical, digital and design leaders:

Dr Jason Brown, Chief Digital Health Officer at Metro North Health
Dr Rae Donovan, Acting Chief Clinical Information Officer at eHealth Queensland
Dr Mia McLanders, Manager of Research and Innovation, CSDS
Fiona Armstrong, CEO, Liquid
Kate Wylie, Director of Health, Liquid (Moderator).
Together, they unpacked the systemic, cultural and structural barriers that hold us back, and explored practical ways to design and deliver technology that clinicians want to use, and patients can meaningfully engage with.

Future Led panel

L-R: Future Led panellists Dr Jason Brown, Dr Rae Donovan, Dr Mia McLanders, Fiona Armstrong and Kate Wylie.

A system under pressure and a culture of workaround
Opening the session, Dr Jason Brown, General Surgeon and Chief Digital Health Officer at Metro North Health, described a system stretched to its limits by demand, ageing populations, lack of infrastructure and no access to money.

“All of those things add together to equal a major wicked challenge,” he said. “We haven’t had that ‘come to Jesus’ moment yet – but we’re not far off. Unless we do something different, we won’t be able to keep up.”

The panel explored that rather than stepping back to reimagine care models, new tools are often added onto legacy systems. This leads to complexity, duplication and clinician burnout.

“We’re very good at bending in healthcare,” said Dr Rae Donovan, Acting Chief Clinical Information Officer at eHealth Queensland. “We find a solution, tweak it for another context, and before we know it, the workaround becomes the workflow.”

That improvisation keeps services running, but it can embed inefficiencies. And when teams are already stretched, there's limited capacity to pause and rethink.

Solving for solution’s sake rather than the problem
A powerful thread emerged early in the discussion: that innovation efforts often start from the solution, not the problem.

“There’s a lot of cool stuff being discovered and driven by grants and research,” said Jason. “But when you actually look at it, you go, ‘Well, what problem is it solving?’”

Without clarity on the underlying problem, technologies risk becoming irrelevant before they’re even implemented. “In medicine, the bench-to-bedside timeline is measured in decades,” he added. “In digital, it’s months or years – and by the time we come up with something, it’s already old.”

The idea that meaningful transformation begins with identifying the right problem became a central theme of this panel discussion. And this is where human-centred design plays a critical role.

Shared problems and local impact
The panel highlighted a nuanced tension: while we share the same problems across the system, their impact is felt differently in local contexts. This drives the need and opportunity for local innovation, but the friction remains in how we scale these solutions.

Fiona Armstrong, Liquid CEO, commented:

“It's become far easier for people at a local level to pick up solutions that solve their immediate problem. Operating in a world of big legacy systems and huge complication, the challenge we have is harnessing that enthusiasm and creativity at a local level to create better opportunities and better solutions for everybody.”

This tension set the stage for a conversation about human-centred design as a way to align around real problems, with local input, but scalable thinking.

Future Led panellists on stage in front of a seated audience
The Future Led panellists on stage before a seated audience at the Clinical Skills Development Service, Metro North Health

The role of human-centred design: Finding the right problem, not just the right solution
Throughout the session, panellists returned again and again to the importance of strategic design to align people, purpose and process.

Human-centred design helps shift the conversation from "what can we build?" to "what do people actually need?"

“If we stay very focussed on understanding the right problem to be solved, and we do that collaboratively with people that are impacted internally and externally, we can bring people on a journey with us and help build understanding and capacity,” Fiona explained.

“What we need to do is look at how do we create those environments and those opportunities for people to collaborate before they get into solution mode.”

Simulation and co-design in practice: CSDS and QuILL
The importance of early, contextual design is exemplified in the work of CSDS and the Queensland Innovation Living Lab (QuILL) – a testbed for evaluating technologies in high-fidelity clinical environments.

“When clinicians trial something in a safe, controlled environment, they often surprise themselves,” said Dr Mia McLanders, Manager of Research and Innovation at CSDS. “They go in saying, ‘I don’t want to try that device’, and it ends up being their favourite.”

These environments provide more than just feedback loops. They help build trust, shift mindsets, and bridge the gap between innovation and implementation.

“We always try to find what supports the least experienced user,” she added. “Because they’re the ones we need to support the most.”

Dr Mia McLanders is shown on the livestream of the panel event

Dr Mia McLanders is shown on the livestream of the Future Led event

Expanding the interdisciplinary team
Rae introduced a key distinction:

“We often refer to multidisciplinary teams when, in actual fact, we should be talking about interdisciplinary teams.

“It’s become more apparent as we introduce technology that we have a vast array of very savvy people who can help us. We need to get better at bringing these technical specialists into the team, we need to create an approach where the digital team isn’t in the back office – they’re actually on the floor and part of team discussions on a day-to-day basis.”

Jason described Metro North’s investment in clinical informatics capability ahead of major digital transitions: “We’ve got nurses, allied health and others that work hand-in-hand with business analysts, solution architects and data analysts. That’s the only way to deliver something successfully.”

The voice of the consumer
While clinician input is critical, the panel was clear: patient voices must also shape the system. Mia shared the importance of the customer voice to the work of the CSDS.

“In health care, often we find that our technologies are designed for work as imagined rather than work is done. And there's a real disconnect that can happen there.

“In our world, our users are both clinicians and consumers. We work hard to integrate and make sure that the consumer experience of, and usability of, different medical devices, processes and software is very much part of the equation.”

Fiona emphasised that patient input isn’t just about empathy, but about insight.

“It's vital to have strong and different perspectives from a customer point of view at the table and involved in providing the insights to design the solution, because people’s lives don't fit into the neat boxes that we operate in. Having a perspective that's outside of our way of thinking is critical if you want to create something meaningful.”

So, is there a better way?
While the panel was clear about the challenges, there was also optimism about the path forward. They agreed there is a better way, but it won’t come from technology alone. It will come from ensuring solutions are aligned to problems and rethinking how we collaborate across roles, embedding design into the way we work.

Human-centred design is not just a tool for refining interfaces. It’s a strategic discipline for driving alignment, surfacing insight and ensuring that our investments in technology lead to better experiences and outcomes.

As Kate closed the session, she reflected on the momentum in the room:

“We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the problems. But there’s also a lot of progress. And more importantly – there’s a community of people ready to do things differently.”

Let’s talk
Talk to Liquid about implementing human-centred design into your organisation to help uncover the right problems to solve.

Why healthcare tech is missing the mark – and is there a better way?

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