Challenge X 2025: The Patient-Led National Design Challenge

Year Submitted: 2025
Published Date: 04 December 2025

Tags: Care Continuum, Population Health, Physical Health, Mental Health, Preventive Care, Patient Education, Community Health, Chronic Care, Intermediate and Long Term Care ＆ Community Care, Care Process ＆ Redesign, Quality Improvement, Design Thinking

About this Content

Aims

Challenge X 2025 introduced a design-led, citizen-partnered approach that transformed healthcare engagement, strengthened multi-stakeholder collaboration, and created sustainable innovation capabilities across organisations.

Background

Challenge X 2025: The Patient-Led National Design Challenge is a first-of-its-kind national initiative that empowers patients, caregivers, and community partners to co-design solutions that enable people with long-term health conditions to live fully beyond diagnosis. Organised by the DesignSingapore Council in partnership with the Centre for Healthcare Innovation and the Alliance of Patients Organizations Singapore, the initiative applies a design-led approach addressing real-world healthcare challenges through those most affected.

Through two intensive design sprints facilitated by the School of X, the initiative brought together ten diverse patient advocacy groups including individuals living with menopause, inflammatory bowel disease, ADHD, intellectual disabilities, dementia, and youth mental health to collaboratively develop practical prototypes with caregivers, clinicians, volunteers, and designers.

Addressing key programme areas in population health, ageing, chronic disease management, disability inclusion, and mental well-being, Challenge X generated community-led innovations like mobile health tools, assistive devices, behavioural interventions, and care-navigation concepts. The initiative engaged citizens and external stakeholders across a range of Non-Governmental Organisations (AWWA, Crohns & Colitis Society of Singapore (CCSS), MINDS, Caring for Life), volunteer groups (Rotaract), and academic institutions (NTU Office of Patient Engagement, Nanyang Polytechnic) fostering a national movement where patients are equal partners in shaping future care models.

Lessons Learnt

Challenge X 2025 introduced a bold shift in public engagement, applying a design-led, patient-driven innovation model to national healthcare an area traditionally shaped by clinicians, and healthcare professionals. For the first time in Singapore, patients and caregivers were positioned not as consultees but as primary designers of solutions, bringing lived experience into a new care paradigm: citizen-led population health and care redesign. This expanded the boundaries of engagement to include groups seldom centred in co-creation, such as persons with intellectual disabilities, youth facing mental health challenges, menopausal women, dementia caregivers, and children with complex medical needs.

The agency pioneered an innovative engagement approach by using rapid design sprints typically used in industry innovation and adapting them for vulnerable health communities. This enabled citizens, clinicians, and designers to collaborate as equals, using storytelling, prototyping, and visual mapping to make complex policy issues accessible and actionable. The approach also responded to emerging healthcare needs by enabling teams to create AI-enabled tools, low-cost assistive devices, medication safety interventions, and communication technologies tailored to real-world patient challenges.

By transforming patients into co-creators of national health solutions, Challenge X redefined how the Public Service engages citizens setting a new benchmark for inclusive, innovation-driven policy development.

Keywords

patient-led, design challenge

Innovators' Details

Connect with this contributor!

Noor Azlinah Odenan - noor.ab.odenan@nhghealth.com.sg

Project Attachment

Challenge X Intro.pdf