Independent Strategic Practice by Livia Germano

RETHINKING CARE Designing more meaningful futures for health & care. Health and care are changing. People are living longer, managing more complex conditions, navigating fragmented systems and expecting more from the services around them. Technology is transforming what is possible. Professionals are being asked to do more with less. And the boundaries between health, wellbeing, everyday life and care are becoming increasingly blurred. But innovation in care is not only about what technology can do. It is about what people need, what organizations choose to value, and what kind of experience we want care to become. This is where I work. I bring together human insight, strategic thinking, innovation and experience design to help health and care organizations explore what could be different — and what is worth building. [Start a conversation] CARE IS AN EXPERIENCE Not just a system. Not just a service. Care happens in moments. A diagnosis. A waiting room. A phone call. A difficult conversation. A medication routine. A handover. A moment of uncertainty. A small gesture that makes someone feel seen. These moments form an experience. And that experience shapes how people understand their health, their relationship with a service, their trust in an organization — and sometimes their willingness to engage with the care around them. So when we rethink care, we need to look beyond the service itself. We need to ask: What does this experience feel like? What matters to the people living it? Where does the system create friction, uncertainty or distance? What could make care more human, meaningful and useful? These are strategic questions. FROM HUMAN NEEDS TO NEW POSSIBILITIES Understanding before designing. My work often starts before the solution is clear. Through qualitative research, conversations, observation, synthesis and participatory exploration, I help organizations uncover the human realities behind a challenge. Because people rarely experience healthcare in neat categories. They experience: life with a condition. life while caring for someone else. life while navigating uncertainty. life between appointments. life around the system. The space between those moments is often where meaningful opportunities are hiding. THREE LENSES FOR RETHINKING CARE 01 — PEOPLE What matters in people's real lives? I explore needs, behaviors, emotions, expectations and contradictions to understand the human experience behind a healthcare challenge. Research · Human Insight · Ethnography · Qualitative Exploration 02 — POSSIBILITIES What could care become? I help teams move beyond incremental improvements to explore new possibilities for services, products, experiences and ways of delivering value. Innovation · Imagination · Future Thinking · Opportunity Exploration 03 — EXPERIENCE What should people actually live? Strategic intentions only become meaningful when they are experienced. I help translate insights and strategic choices into journeys, service concepts, experiences and offers. Experience Strategy · Journey Design · Service Innovation · Concept Development REIMAGINING CARE A strategic experience for health & care organizations. Reimagining Care is a participatory experience designed to help teams step back from the current system and explore what care could become. Rather than starting with: “How do we improve this service?” we start with: “What does meaningful care look and feel like from the perspective of the people who live it?” Participants explore human needs, tensions, future possibilities and strategic opportunities — using conversation, visual thinking, creative exploration and, where useful, LEGO® Serious Play®. The experience can help teams: uncover different perspectives on care; make assumptions visible; identify unmet or emerging needs; explore future scenarios; imagine new services and experiences; develop principles for meaningful care; identify opportunities for innovation; create shared strategic direction. Formats: 90-minute exploration · Half-day lab · Full-day strategic experience · Multi-session project [Discuss a Reimagining Care experience] FROM CARE TO EXPERIENCE Turning values into something people can actually live. Many organizations know what they want to stand for. The harder question is: How does that intention show up in the experience? This consulting and strategy offer helps organizations translate purpose, brand and strategic intent into tangible experiences across the care journey. We can explore: Promise → Journey → Moments → Behaviors → Service → Experience This can support: patient journeys; caregiver experiences; employee experiences; service redesign; new offers; digital and physical touchpoints; innovation concepts; brand-driven experience strategy. The goal is not to make care look better. It is to make the experience more coherent, useful and meaningful. [Talk about an experience challenge] LIVING WITH CARE Looking beyond the patient journey. Healthcare is often designed around encounters with the system. But people live their lives around those encounters. A person living with a chronic condition may spend only a small fraction of their time interacting with healthcare professionals — while the condition shapes decisions, routines, relationships, work, identity and everyday life. This creates a different design question: What would we create if we designed not only for the healthcare journey, but for the life around it? This is an area where my experience in qualitative research, brand strategy and innovation comes together particularly strongly. [Explore the work] RESEARCH → STRATEGY → EXPERIENCE A connected way of working. I don't believe research, strategy and experience should live in separate boxes. The most interesting opportunities often emerge when they are connected. RESEARCH Understand people, contexts and changing realities. ↓ SENSEMAKING Make patterns, tensions and opportunities visible. ↓ STRATEGY Decide what matters and where to focus. ↓ INNOVATION Imagine new possibilities. ↓ EXPERIENCE Translate them into something people can actually live. This is the space where I work. STRATEGIC EXPERIENCES FOR HEALTH & CARE Different questions require different experiences. MEANINGFUL FUTURES What kind of future of care is worth building? A participatory futures experience for teams exploring change, emerging needs and new possibilities. Best for: Strategy · Innovation · Leadership · Transformation IMAGINATION APPLIED What becomes possible when we deliberately expand the space of imagination? A creative strategy experience for teams exploring new services, products, offers and experiences. Best for: Innovation · New Offers · Experience Design · Brand-driven Innovation REIMAGINING CARE What could care become if we started with what matters to people? A deeper exploration of the future of care, human needs and strategic opportunities. Best for: Health & Care · Patient Experience · Service Innovation · Transformation MAKING CARE VISIBLE How do different people actually experience the system? A participatory experience that makes different perspectives, relationships and tensions visible. Best for: Teams · Stakeholders · Service Design · Organizational Alignment THE ROLE OF LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Making the invisible visible. Some conversations are difficult because the thing we are trying to discuss is abstract. A system. A relationship. A feeling. A future. A team dynamic. A possibility that doesn't exist yet. LEGO® Serious Play® gives people another way to think. By building rather than simply describing, participants can externalize ideas, explore different perspectives and create shared meaning. I use LEGO® Serious Play® as one tool within a broader strategic and experiential practice. The method serves the question. The question comes first. MY EXPERIENCE IN HEALTH & CARE Working at the intersection of human insight and strategic opportunity. My work in health and care has included exploring the lived experience of chronic conditions, understanding human needs and behaviors, developing strategic opportunities, exploring future scenarios and using participatory methods to help organizations think differently about what they could create. Selected work includes: RD — HEALTHCARE Exploring the everyday lives of people living with chronic conditions to uncover needs, tensions and opportunities beyond the traditional healthcare interaction. CRDL Exploring how a technology created within care could generate new possibilities for connection, interaction and experience. HEALTH & CARE INNOVATION Bringing qualitative research, strategic thinking and participatory exploration together to help teams move from human insight toward new possibilities. [See selected work] A NOTE ON EXPERTISE I don't come to healthcare pretending to know everything about healthcare. Health and care are complex fields. Clinical expertise, operational knowledge, policy, technology and lived experience all matter. My role is different. I bring expertise in understanding people, framing complex questions, finding patterns, facilitating conversations, imagining possibilities and translating insight into strategic direction and experience. I work alongside the people who bring the domain expertise required by each challenge. That combination is often where new thinking becomes possible. FOR HEALTH & CARE ORGANIZATIONS You don't need to have the answer before we start. Perhaps you are: Exploring a new service. Trying to understand changing patient or caregiver needs. Rethinking a care journey. Looking for new opportunities for innovation. Bringing different stakeholders together. Exploring the future of care. Trying to translate purpose into experience. Facing a question that doesn't fit neatly into one department. Let's start there. Tell me what you're trying to understand, change or imagine. [Start a conversation] FOR HEALTH & CARE PROFESSIONALS What if you could step outside the system for a moment? Reimagining Care experiences can also be designed for professionals who are carrying the complexity of care every day. These experiences can create space for: reflection; perspective-taking; collective sensemaking; creative exploration; professional identity; team connection; imagining new ways of working. Not therapy. Not another training session. A different space to think about the work you do — and the future you are helping to create. [Explore an experience] IDEAS I AM EXPLORING Notes from the future of care. Rethinking Care is also an ongoing editorial space. I am interested in questions such as: The Life Around the Patient What happens when we design for the person's life, rather than only for their interaction with healthcare? The Emotional Architecture of Care What emotions are built into our services — and what might happen if we designed for them deliberately? Care as Experience What can experience design teach us about trust, dignity, agency and belonging? The Future of Chronic Care How might care change when we stop designing around episodes and start designing around lives? Meaningful Innovation in Healthcare Is every possible innovation worth building? The Care Experience of Professionals What happens to care when the people delivering it are overwhelmed, disconnected or excluded from designing the future? Technology and the Human Touch As more interactions become digital, what should remain deeply human? What Kind of Care Do We Want? Beyond efficiency and access: what does good care actually mean? [Read the Rethinking Care journal] WORK WITH ME From one strategic question to a larger transformation. CONSULTING For organizations that need strategic thinking, research or innovation support. Research · Strategy · Innovation · Experience STRATEGIC EXPERIENCES For teams that need to explore, align, imagine or decide together. 90 minutes · Half-day · Full-day · Multi-session PROJECTS For more complex challenges requiring research, strategic framing, innovation and experience development. From human insight to strategic direction and opportunity. TALKS & KEYNOTES For conferences, leadership teams and healthcare communities exploring the future of care, innovation and meaningful experiences. [Let's talk] RETHINKING CARE Because the future of care is not only about what we can do. It is about what is worth doing. Livia Germano Strategist · Researcher · Facilitator · Experience Designer Working across Health & Care · Innovation · Strategy · Experience Based in the Netherlands · Working internationally [Start a conversation]