Health and Wellbeing by Design

An ageing population, the rise in the number of people living with long-term conditions and diminishing resources to support healthcare have led to a significant shift in where and how healthcare is delivered. One challenge is how to reduce the cost and burden of disease, particularly of non-communicable disease, by focusing more research work around prevention and looking at how design can work in prevention. When people do ultimately require a healthcare intervention, a further challenge is how to optimise this experience for the best possible outcome.

Existing models of health, where resources are devoted almost entirely to the treatment of disease, are giving way to approaches where individuals are provided with skills and tools to manage their condition; health systems and clinicians are exploring how to reframe the patient as a person with active participation in their own health. By addressing the roles of all participants in care practices, organizations, delivery systems, and engagement methods, service and systemic design has a huge potential to contribute to changing landscapes in healthcare.Health models where equal emphasis is placed on the promotion of wellbeing or on the prevention of ill-health are also emerging. Design has a key role to play within these shifting paradigms of health. And designers are called upon adopting a new role where they not only apply design to health challenges, but are able to lead multidisciplinary groups and make major decisions that will influence behaviour contributing to long-term prevention and better overall population health.

We invite designers and researchers whose focus is on the role of design in promoting health through the creation of products, services, patient experiences, healthcare environments and interventions to submit papers to this thematic track.

We are particularly interested in papers/presentations from researchers and designers exploring ways that design can contribute to supported self-management of health, the role of design in building resilience, on design in the context of preventive health, exchange of knowledge involving successful collaborations of design in healthcare, especially accounting for the role of design practice and research, organizational change-making, and systems and service design, Methods and new ways to involve people in relationship building and creating sustainable dialogue(s) that support patients and relatives as well as clinicians in design for health.

Indicative References

Chamberlain, P, Wolstenholme, D, Dexter, M, Seals, E., 2015. The State of the art of design in health: An expert-led review of the extant of the art of design theory and practice in health and social care. Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University.

Tsekleves, E and Cooper, E (Eds.) 2017. Design for health. Design for social responsibility series. London, Routledge

Ulrich, R., Zimring, C. M., Zuemei, C., DuBose, J., Seo, H., Quan, X. & Joseph, A., 2008, A review of the research literature on evidence-based healthcare design, Health Environments Research & Design (HERD) Journal 1(3).

Bate, P., Robert, G. (2007). Bringing User Experience to Healthcare Improvement, Radcliffe Publishing.

Jones, P. (2013). Design for Care, Innovating Healthcare Experience. Rosenfeld Media, Brooklyn, NY.