PROVIDENCE, RI – Brian Goldberg, an architecture teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design, said he was talking to a physicist about the development of a medical device for patients who need 24/7 monitoring for a heart attack for the rest of their lives when he began to think of how artists and designers could impact the healthcare system.
What does it mean to have a medical device and to be able to understand oneself as being part of a medical surveillance system for the rest of one’s life? Should it look like jewelry to hide the fact that it’s a medical device? Goldberg wondered if he should put the physicist in touch with a jewelry maker.
With these thoughts percolating, Goldberg was ready when RISD President John Maeda asked him to oversee programming for the school’s “Making It Better” symposium. The event, funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and held in March, brought together artists, designers and members of the healthcare community to talk about how artists and designers can impact the future of healthcare.
“Rather than treating art and design as a very narrowly defined service that’s rendered at some late stage in the development of a product or service or program, we’re trying to suggest that we are both interested in and capable and maybe even necessary partners at all stages in the development of ideas across the spectrum of health and healthcare,” Goldberg said.
The participation of artists and designers in the healthcare system goes far beyond creating pamphlets, said Steve Downs, the program officer of RISD’s grant and chief technology and information officer at RWJF.
“Good design can lead to efficiency; it can lead to mistakes not being made,” he said. “A good designer can come in and think about how a team of people ought to interact and create ways for them to do so that are efficient and rich in communication.”
But artists can play an even bigger role in healthcare by relating to the everyday lives of people.
“If you think about health and what drives health, most of it is not inside the healthcare system,” Downs said. “That’s where the cost is, but what drives your health is really about the environment in which you live, work and play.”
“Patients have a role to play in making healthcare decisions,” said Pamela Wescott, director of patient perspectives at the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making and a speaker at the symposium. “When the evidence shows that they have a choice, it matters what is personally important to them.”
“If you really want people to behave in a certain way or act in a certain way, you need to understand how they see the world and how they interact with the world day to day,” Downs added.
That’s where artists come in. They immerse themselves in the world of the everyday, interpret it and sometimes change it.
They can create staircases that act like pianos to encourage people to use the stairs instead of elevators. They can design urban landscapes that make walking and riding bicycles easier, thereby making cities healthier places to live. They can create video games to spur people to exercise or design interfaces that make it easier for patients to interact with their doctors.
Artists can also act as agents for social change.
“When we talk about health for social change or social change to improve health, that is a really strong path towards improving health,” Downs said. “Artists are helping people see the world differently,” and can harness the power of emotion to galvanize people to make changes that will improve their health and wellness.
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