“Some hospitals are taking evidence-based design seriously,” said Roger Ulrich, director of the Center for Health Systems and Design at Texas A&M. “Other institutions use pretty traditional design that pays lip service to the evidence. There may be high style, but the hospital is still noisy. Or the windows are too small to let much light in. There are missed opportunities.”
what is new hospital design giving every patient a single room and lots of light. that is correct! So what is new about that, well think back in the “age” the rich had their own room and lots of light cause they are high class, it is just that now, hospitals are now thinking of removing the “let everyone equal” to the new approach “let everyone be high class.” but being high class has a price… it is costly to build and maintain.
That is my annoyance, this is not innovation but just a regenerating idea what we had in the past.
While the jury it out on whether surgical masks are effective in preventing the spread of swine flu, folks throughout the world are making them a bit more fun to wear. Some of these pics were taken from the streets of Mexico, and the others are from Japanese designer Yoriko Yoshida.While the Mexican government is handing out masks at subway stations and preventing large assemblies of people to reduce the transmission of the virus, US officials are still stating that surgical masks do not do much to prevent the transmission of the 2009 H1N1 influenza bug.
For the record, the CDC has just started Twittering about the swine flu. If they twitter that we should start wearing masks, it’s good to know there’s a stylish way to protect yourself.
So in Toyko (NYTimes pic couple days back) has a neat device to detect for any person who may be sick…
SARS…to…Swine.
Last night NBC was broadcasting how New Yorkers were wearing masks…but other Americans have mix feelings of trust and safety when watching fellow citizens masking their faces…. I know we have a “flu situation” but as a cultural observant designer…why are Americans uncomfortable of you wearing a mask compared to the Asian cultures of mask wear on a regular basic? It is a wear imaginative theory in the back of my head.
To start off… technically we are to brush our teeth right after every meal to prevent plaque build up. i like it, but is it green? I am no green designer, but i am brought up close to amish communities… this is a waste technically….unless you remember to recycle it….and when there is a recycle bin near you….
I still like the experience of it and preventing long term damage to my teeth+gum!
The demographics of the baby boom
have resulted in startling statistics:
today, well over 15% of North America’s
population is over 65. In 2030, 25% of
the population of the province of Ontario
will be 65 or over, doubling the number
of seniors. Today, a minimum of 20% of
visits to Emergency Units are by seniors,
and half of these results in admittance. If
we apply the same logic of an increase in
the senior population, by 2030, 40% of
the visits to Emergency will be by seniors
and half of them will be admitted as
patients. Our current hospital facilities
cannot accommodate these requirements
in an optimal manner.
It is the sad truth about designing for the aging population, and i personally feel most of us (youngsters) don’t wish to design for the elders due to our fear of our future. But this is how i see it. if we start now in our 20s thinking about what type of lifestyle we want to claim in our 80s then we need to face the problem and give ourselves decades of trial and error to solve, cause usually it is til we are 45-55 that we start saying “hey wait a minute, i want this for retirement, not that!”
the newsletter sums up a very well rounded issue that we will face in our retirement era. just realize this much…we have 30 year intervals – childhood 0-30, supporting family(steady job) 30-60, retirement 60-90. I know this is not true for all, but the idea of thirty years each…different than the past.
few years ago i went to the exhibit – human body. If you have not got a chance to go (even if you have sensitive stomach issues) it is required. Why? From a designer’s perspective is how they walk you through the exhibit and “feel” your way through the information. In many cases your brain gets overloaded with facts and cues about the history or science of stuff, sometimes you get a headache afterwards when you walk out the musuem. but the human body exhibit made me go – wow, that’s how big a kidney stone is? So that is where the stomach sits? Oh i did not know all our vital organs are in the rib cage? We have a fat sac? We don’t know why we yawn?— enough said enjoy the book images, and get it for yourself if you want to be entertain by health facts.
so what is wrong with this pic…. most caretakers are in their 40s-60s… yeah the product is important cause we have old people taking care of even older people. It is a shame but this is the fact, these are jobs that young people do not wish to do because it makes them become aware of how life will be when we get old and it does not pay well either. So robots anyone for this job?
About the design, my 2cent…. too much bulk + the pictures are misleading because with the person wearing it is very thin but in the perspective in the 2nd pic the product is too thick i can’t image how to get close to the elder to lift them up. Believe me, i have done this ; when lifting an elder you can’t just pull them up or their joints and ligaments are pulled, you have to lift them up and allow their legs to rest on the ground when they are in position, so you really have to be stupid close to them.
also the empathy from the device is just, alienation and if an older woman wears it will make them more depress because this design for a young male to use not a 40-50 year old woman to use who is overweight (stereotype of baby boomers). And the idea has been done but no one has none nothing to get it to market considering we are on the verse of a silver crisis in the next decade. (technically it will not hit us (americans) till 2020.)
Designer: Erik Ulises Lanuza via yanko design posting.
So, as it seems, “media” is coming into the medical world. Below is an example of “medical media”. Georgia Tech design a camera to assist medical wounds.
“…The camera provides fast, accurate and repeatable digital documentation of wound progression, a necessary component to validate payment from insurance and government agencies in the U.S.
Dr. John Hitt of IP2Biz sees a growing need for wound management. “Hospitals, rehabilitation clinics and specialized care centers all need to address the increasing requirements for pay-for-performance healthcare,” he said. Once made widely available, the device would enable healthcare providers to consistently document healing and meet validation requirements from Medicare/Medicaid and insurance agencies….”
So this is what i have been up to this week for my next Radius PR marketing project. It is super amazing how small that little screen in the image above. so yeah go to gizmag.com to find more tech info.
this is a quick information blog of blogs. A simple collections of oxcullent findings out on the web.
(currently I am shifting gears about how this blog will evolve. For quick and updated information there are links in the info section - google reader and twitter)
