Healthcare Design - October 2014 - 16

Art Therapy

MONITOR
TAKE 5

David Ruthven
David Ruthven, Healthcare Design's 2014
HCD 10 Rising Star and creative director at NXT Health (New York), offers five
technology-fueled ideas and trends that
may shape the future of healthcare delivery and design.

1. Geofence
Geofences are digital boundaries that trigger notifications when a user
enters into a predetermined zone. Recent advances enable devices to
provide a triangulated "micro-location" within an inch of the user's position,
and low-cost transmitters would allow more proliferation (and subsequent
data gathering) from a range of objects. In healthcare, geofences could lead
to heightened locational awareness for caregivers, precise event tracking for
patients, and indoor turn-by-turn navigation so that visitors don't get lost.

2. Internet of things
The "Internet of Things," a term coined by researchers at MIT for the interconnection of everyday objects through network technology, has seen rapid
growth, with projections predicting more than 30 billion connected devices
by 2020. Patients today are surrounded by technology that monitors and
sustains them, but does that technology truly "care" about their well-being?
As consumers become comfortable with wellness-monitoring technology,
how will this shift translate to the tools caregivers and patients use?

3. Robot caregivers
While having human-to-human contact is still the ideal scenario, the reality is
that the demand for senior care far outpaces the supply of human caregivers able to render it. In appropriate circumstances, robots are more than
capable of supplementing care (e.g., Cosmobot) and providing companionship (e.g., Paro). They could also provide functional features to hospital staff,
such as UV-light space disinfection, heavy lifting, and supply fetching.

4. IFTTT

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HCDmagazine.com 10.14

5. Upgradia
The phenomenon known as Upgradia is driven by consumers' desire
for constant improvement of existing objects as opposed to the
wasteful model of planned obsolescence. Commonplace in digital
tech, this trend is emerging in physical goods, such as the Samsung
TV Evolution Kit that enables consumers to update equipment without
having to drop the old model off at Goodwill. How could this concept
translate to a hospital environment, where hacking happens every day
by front-line staff trying to improve care processes? HCD

TODD BOEBEL PHOTOGRAPHY

Create beauty and inspire a sense of wonder
with our large-scale kinetic mobile sculptures
and architectural lighting.

With all the monitoring technology used in a typical healthcare environment,
there's limitless potential to harness data in new ways for "If This, Then
That" (IFTTT) functions, which connect disparate services and objects. For
example, monitoring systems could ping a concierge robot (see above) that
a patient is becoming dehydrated and needs a glass of water, before the
patient thinks to ask a nurse for assistance. A smart cup could then trigger
a silent alert when it dips below a certain threshold, bringing the robot back
with a fresh refill-but not if the bed detects the patient is sleeping.

http://www.HCDmagazine.com

Healthcare Design - October 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Healthcare Design - October 2014