What Field Research Can Teach Us About Health

Understanding Stories, Spaces, and Everyday Behaviors in a Data-Driven Sector

In healthcare, we’re surrounded by data. Patient records, population trends, treatment outcomes, survey scores. And yet, important details still get missed.

People fall through the cracks. Tech solutions go unused. Care plans are misunderstood or abandoned. The numbers might tell one version of the story, but the lived experience often reveals another.

This is where field research becomes useful.

Ethnographic methods, which come from anthropology and social science, help us understand how people actually experience health systems, clinics, and digital tools. Rather than relying solely on what people say in surveys or reports, field research focuses on real-world behavior and context. It invites us to pay attention to what happens in the everyday, not just in the aggregate.

Health Happens in Context

Health is not just something that happens in hospitals or on charts. It’s something people live through—at home, at work, on buses, in bedrooms, in waiting rooms. As a result, health is shaped by habits, relationships, time constraints, and environments.

For example:

• A medication reminder app might function perfectly, but still be ignored if it doesn’t match the flow of someone’s day.
  
  

• A well-designed clinic may still feel unwelcoming if signage is unclear or staff don’t reflect the language or culture of the community.
  
  

• A telehealth platform may offer access, but leave patients feeling unseen or emotionally distant from their provider.
  
  

These are not rare exceptions. They are common friction points that often go unmeasured and unaddressed. Fieldwork helps bring these experiences to light.

What Fieldwork Looks Like in Health Settings

Ethnographic field research in healthcare might involve:

• Observing how patients move through a clinical space or workflow
  
  

• Spending time in a waiting room, noticing what calms or stresses people
  
  

• Listening to patients and families describe their care experiences
  
  

• Shadowing nurses or intake staff to understand process gaps
  
  

• Mapping how communication breaks down across departments
  
  

This work does not aim to generalize across entire populations. Instead, it aims to understand local patterns, context, and nuance. It helps identify why something that looks good on paper may fall short in practice.

Relevance for Health Technology

In healthtech, designers often aim to build around user needs. But fast timelines, funding pressures, and technical complexity can create distance between product teams and the people they serve.

Ethnographic methods help close that gap.

They can show:

• How tools are actually used in daily life
  
  

• What assumptions may not hold up in practice
  
  

• Where emotional trust affects tool adoption
  
  

• Which features help or hinder real workflows
  
  

Rather than building solutions in isolation, field research helps ground design decisions in the messy, human realities of care.

Final Thought

Healthcare systems are full of smart, well-intentioned people trying to solve difficult problems. But even good systems can break down at the point of use. That is why fieldwork still matters.

Ethnographic research does not compete with clinical data or digital metrics. It complements them. It brings forward the everyday realities that shape whether care feels possible, accessible, or safe.

Understanding how people actually move through the systems we build is not a soft skill. It is a critical part of making health work better for everyone.

Copyright © 2025 Ryan Badertscher. All rights reserved.