Designing future healthcare
In the autumn of 2021 design students of the Emerging Designs master鈥檚 course were challenged by a brief set by a collaboration project by The Nordic Council of Ministers and Swedish Region V盲sterbotten. The students were asked to illustrate how the future of healthcare and social care will look like by 2030 and beyond.
The assignment was part of the Nordic collaboration project 鈥淗ealthcare and Care through Distance-spanning Solutions鈥. The project is arranged by The Nordic Welfare Centre and Centre for Rural Medicine - Region Va虉sterbotten, funded by The Nordic Council of Ministers.
鈥業n the student designed concepts the values of patient empowerment, increased accessibility and transparency are at core supported by distance spanning digital solutions鈥, says Project Manager Niclas Forsling from the Centre for Rural Medicine, Storuman Sweden.
According to the teacher in charge of the course, Professor Severi Uusitalo, the course projects emphasized experimentation, and the process also succeeded in raising new questions about the complex design task. In the spring, students will have the opportunity to continue their project to a validated solution proposal.
Complex challenges bend into scenarios with the help of design
According to the assignment, students were expected to create visions, not ready-made solutions. IDBM program student Falguni Purohit chose the course precisely because of the assignment and was involved in designing a concept for a mobile MRI service in remote areas.
鈥楧esign in healthcare is a very interesting topic for me and since Nordic healthcare is spoken of in such a superior light, working through their challenges was even more intriguing.鈥
Due to its complexity and vastness, the assignment was challenging also to student Shreya Shrivastava. Her team designed a concept for a digital tool that aims for better mental health care.
鈥業 learned how to navigate within a complex system and develop scenarios for the digital healthcare future. The course also introduced us to the co-evolution process where the problem and solution evolve together rather than one preceding the other.鈥
Student teams produced seven concepts
BUBA is a toolkit for remote pediatric diagnostics. BUBA is a device including a set of instruments designed for remote contact with a doctor. It will allow you to perform basic check-ups on your child without having to visit the doctor鈥檚 office. The service is both playful and built in a way so the parent can also learn from the interaction.
AMRI Remote is a mobile diagnostic and preventive MRI system for distant healthcare. This technology, being developed at Aalto University, makes the MRI unit smaller, lighter and mobile. In 2030 the MRI comes home, helping especially the elderly people living in remote locations. The platform functions across the three largest northernmost hospitals in Finland, Sweden and Norway.
EnVa is a preventive healthcare system approach for the elderly living in sparsely populated areas. It combines data collected from a wearable device with mood data collected by a conversational AI. The service approach integrates technology, family, community and healthcare professionals, in order to make the elderly feel socially supported and cared for.
Hopealinja is a synthetic audio intermediator service connecting dementia patients with their relatives and others through a new simulated audio service that also analyzes patient鈥檚 cognitive wellbeing. The solution gathers data of the development of the condition in an easy and embedded way and alleviates the symptoms of dementia that evoke stress to the patient and family members.
Mimi is a dementia-oriented social technology, a multi-device platform expanding on the notion of having family, relatives and healthcare into one encompassing 鈥榮afety net鈥. By frequently generating questions and memory prompts to respond to, the service connects persons with dementia with their family members with little effort. The service is cognitively stimulating as well as measuring the cognitive performance.
MonCom is a communication and data gathering tool for better mental health. It helps the clients manage and share their health data with care providers effortlessly. A wearable device monitors the clients' well-being by gathering active and passive data. The built-in AI helps the client, therapist, and doctor to navigate this data effortlessly by highlighting only the necessary information.
AMRI Emergency Stroke Unit is an AMRI imaging unit that cooperates with treatment level ambulances, aiming at decreasing the treatment times in stroke cases. The van-sized unit would be used for non-emergency imaging following predetermined routes along small villages and care centres. For emergency cases, the unit would function as an additional touchpoint capable of imaging and treating strokes that is closer to rural patients.
The concepts are on display at the Dubai World Expo 2022. See the concepts in more detail here.
Read more:
Norden:
Read more news
Samu Taulu develops next-generation brain imaging methods
Associate Professor of neurostimulation and neuroimaging Samu Taulu develops more precise methods for understanding the brain
Student exchange in Europe? Unite! can take you there
Aalto is a member of Unite!, a European university alliance that gives students the opportunity to internationalise their degrees both online and in-person. Join the webinar to find out more.
Opinion: Finnish language learning should be integrated into degree programs
In this opinion piece, Rebekka Nylund, an expert at the University of Helsinki, and Elisa R盲s盲nen, a university lecturer at Aalto University, reflect on what they have learned from the EU-co-funded Language-supported Knowledge Pathways project and offer suggestions on how and why learning Finnish could be integrated into the structures of higher education degree programs.