PSFK’s Future of Health Report details 15 trends that will impact health and wellness around the world. Simple advances such as off-the-grid energy and the introduction of gaming into healthcare service offerings sit alongside more future-forward developments such as bio-medical printing. It is our hope that this report will inspire your thinking and lead to services, applications and technologies that will allow for more available, quality healthcare.
In the first half of the Future of Health Report, PSFK provides an analysis of the trends impacting healthcare around the world. We explore this future from the perspective of organizations, patients, healthcare providers and communities. We also highlight how technology and access to information play a vital role in the ways that people understand, manage and receive care. The trends identified within this document and the examples used to bring them to life are inspired by innovation from around the globe.
In the second half of the report, PSFK features concepts generated by the world’s leading advertising and design agencies in reaction to trends found within the Future of Health report. The parameters for the solutions were set by UNICEF, and were imagined with emerging countries in mind. Specifically, UNICEF identified the key challenges faced by community health workers around the world.
The World Expo 2010 in Shanghai is in full swing this summer and many manufacturers are naturally showing off their best or latest realizations. Canon is presenting a concept camera called Wonder Camera in an attempt to expose how we might capture photos/videos 20 years down the road. The following video put together by Gizmag covers Canon’s presentation at the World Expo. It contains many personal comments and reflections, but is quite interesting anyway, considering most of us will not go to Shanghai to check out the Japanese pavilion.
Tristan Perich’s1-Bit Symphony is an electronic composition in five movements on a single microchip. Though housed in a CD jewel case like his first circuit album (1-Bit Music 2004-05), 1-Bit Symphony is not a recording in the traditional sense; it literally “performs” its music live when turned on. A complete electronic circuit—programmed by the artist and assembled by hand—plays the music through a headphone jack mounted into the case itself. The project is set to be released on Cantaloupe Music on August 24, 2010.
Costing 393 dollars and 61 cents this Beagle Embedded Starter Kit from Liquidware is open-source tablet computer with a 4.3″ resistive touchscreen and it ships with 4GB SDRAM with Ã…ngström Linux pre-installed. Good for all sorts of prototyping needs.
Last year, I had the chance to attend SIGGRAPH Asia 2009, and the highlight for me was the Emerging Technologies demos. You can try out for real all those crazy demos and setups.The trailers for the 2010 edition in L.A. are out, and it looks very promising.
TinkerLondon‘s CEO and friend Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino recently published a nice post about Design Student’s online presence. It’s a quick rundown of points and tips (I’m sure her presentation had the full expanded version), but it’s good that these things are said and written about.
Can’t remember how/where I found Studio Sketchpad, but it looks pretty cool to me.
Basically, you code in your favorite browser using the Processing language, and then it gets rendered directly in that same favorite browser of yours using Processing.js. But wait, there’s also a pretty nifty lil’ chat application that’s built in so that you can co-create and/or ask for help at 3:00 in the morning when things aren’t lookin’ up.
I recently went to Scotland by train, and found no door handle, button or whatever opening mechanism on the inside section of the train’s doors. Here is the way to open the door!
There must be a reason why they did it like this: saving parts and costs, preventing unintended openings, safety (could be discussed), accessibility (absolutely not if you ask me), others. Let me know if you know that wee bit of knowledge. I’m very curious.
We’re back… and after day 3 we’ve dove in and are about to get our hands wet collecting samples and to start generating bacterial cultures under Phd Microbiologist Brian Degger. It’s pretty amazing… Medialab Prado has actually set up a wet lab in the building- harvesting elements from an old toilet/ washroom- to help make all these projects possible.
Entitled Urban Forage Contaminant Assay, the goal of the project and the next 2 weeks (now week and a half) is to produce a bacterial based-luminance assay to test the food of urban foragers for the presence of heavy metals. We are interested in merging wild bacteria and electronics in a way that gives us an indication of the presence of heavy metals. We propose to do this by isolating luminous bacteria from seafood, this bacteria is sensitive to heavy metals,culturing the bacteria until glowing , and then with a control solution and an unknown solution of plant material(these are known to concentrate heavy metals) compare the luminosities of the solutions with an optical to electrical detector to be logged in an online.
To take a little peak into what we’re doing under Brian’s direction you can check out the Wiki. Nirvana and I are attempting to help as much as we can on the electronics side, and at the moment figuring out how to build a Fridge controlled by arduino for these little bacteria. Simultaneously we’re putting in our two sense about what we think the end result should be, of course we’re thinking of the user experience and the final product design.
Fellow UID IxD’er Nirvana and I have escaped UmeÃ¥ and landed in Madrid to participate at this years Interactivos? at the Medialab Prado. We’re currently torn between a couple of projects, one of which is located above . Tocheck out the selected works and learn a bit more about what will transpire over the next couple weeks stay tuned.
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) recently revamped its quaterly student magazine XRDS, which is largely run by students. The first issue celebrating the relaunch is titled The Future of Interaction. It contains many interesting texts related to IxD: a profile on Hiroshi Ishii, brain and natural interfaces and a bunch of other nifty stuff. There is even a little tutorial for coding an app for real-time face detection using a webcam.
I received the print version at home as a student member (it’s quite cheap btw), but it is also available online via the ACM Digital Library (should be accessible while on UMU network or at the library). Or contact me if you are keen on getting the PDF version.
![IceCap [Automated Collapsible Forms]](http://www.interactiondesign.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/500_0.jpg)
