An ‘IKEA’ Healthcare System

The NHS is the child of Wales, born from the nation’s values of compassion and equality. Its founding father, Aneurin Bevan, would be immensely proud of the adult it has become but also, like every parent, fear for its future. We, as the Bevan Future Thinkers are grateful that we will one day work for this incredible service but are also apprehensive about its future given the current challenges. Consequently, we have been reflecting upon the changes we would like to see to ensure our NHS is in good health by 2050.

The aim of the Bevan Future Thinkers is to use our insights and views to think of new and innovative ideas to better our health and care system. We believe that young people across Wales deserve to be heard and given the opportunity to engage with key stakeholders to action the changes we want to see.

Our main aim is to improve prudent health and patient care as they are at the heart of the NHS and at the centre of each of its core values. Our approach to achieving this has been inspired by the global furniture brand, IKEA. IKEA seeks to use as few resources as possible to make and sell furniture without compromising on quality, durability, or customer satisfaction.

As Wales continues to adopt an integrated model of health and social care, we believe that a crucial aspect of this is community health. If we can arm our patients with the correct health toolkit, much like an IKEA furniture flat pack, they could build their own health at home. With clear user-instructions included and locally staffed hubs where patients can get guided help, our vision for NHS Wales is one in which we innovate to keep people and patients healthy at home.

Moreover, there are several principles from IKEA that can be applied to our healthcare system. For example, the checkout system at IKEA stores, which ensures that those who need the most help, get the most help when they need could help us to innovate and streamline the triage system in secondary care.