Ara Manawa was established in 2018. It was created to strengthen the design and innovation capability of Te Toka Tumai Auckland (formerly Auckland District Health Board).
We were preceded in this space at Te Toka Tumai Auckland by the Performance Improvement team and the former Design for Health and Wellbeing Lab.
Before Ara Manawa
The effect of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis on available health funding, operational targets such as reduced wait times, and a growing demand for services; required a new response from the then Auckland District Health Board (Te Toka Tumai Auckland).
Our sister team, the Performance Improvement was created in 2009: with skillsets outside the traditional realm of health such as Lean and Six Sigma. They partnered with clinicians across the entire hospital to understand opportunities in how work was organised, where the blockages were, and to ultimately improve performance. It was one of the first teams of its type internationally. Partnering with existing services, their changes saved staff time and reduced patient waiting. They also supported safer, improved clinical practices, through better use of donated blood products as one example.
This afforded space for Te Toka Tumai Auckland to become future focused, to think beyond volumes, throughput, and budgets. To focus on the experience of patients, whānau, and staff in the spaces, systems, and stuff used to provide care.
In 2012, the then Dean of AUT Creative Faculty, and Chief of Planning at Te Toka Tumai, connected small initiatives between their organisations and started using a space, not yet ready for clinical expansions, as a joined programme design lab.
The Design for Health and Wellbeing Lab
The lab ran for several years until 2017, engaging in visual, product, and digital design projects through a team of AUT designers, the students and researchers they supported.
Finally, in 2018, building upon the learnings from the previous venture, Te Toka Tumai Auckland established Ara Manawa, which expanded opportunities to work with universities across Aotearoa New Zealand
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