This was
the winning scenario presented by six students from HU University of
Applied Sciences Utrecht last Friday at the Future Health Battle event.
The winners will have the opportunity to continue working on a prototype
over the next six months, which they will then present at the World
Design Forum.
The Future Health Battle was organized
by U CREATE and brought together over 40 students from different
disciplines for a period of five days. Future design thinkers, IT
specialists and journalists competed to present the most innovative view
of the future of healthcare with the help of the World Design Forum, Philips Design, the Jeroen Bosch Hospital and SOS Alarm.
The Battle touched on many ethical dilemmas and discussions: ‘If you
never get sick, would you miss getting better?’ ‘Would you choose to
have a robotic arm if you had weak bones?’ ‘Would you be prepared to
reveal your medical records if it would enable you to find you perfect
partner in love?’ and ‘Is getting better the same as feeling healthy?’
One future scenario stood out as going
much further than its competitors. Anne van Riel, Roxanne Helder,
Anneline Sevenster, Bart van den Brink, Sander Beekman and Jessie Krul
devised a scenario called Genbrio. The chairman of the U CREATE jury,
Walter Amerika, explains what made Genbrio the winning scenario: ‘This
group went through the whole process of design thinking and outlined a
convincing and comprehensive view of a possible future scenario in
healthcare.’ Journalism students Roxanne Herder and Anne van Riel found
it quite scary to let go of everything and advance further and further
into their brave new world. ‘In journalism you can fall back on your
research, but this was different because everything and anything was
allowed. It went well beyond the world of facts and figures.’
In the week of the Battle, the students
took to the street to test their future scenarios on the general
public. They got some surprising reactions which showed that people are
prepared to take the idea of genetically manipulating babies quite a
long way. To some people, ordering the perfect baby seemed ‘selfish’.
But others felt that this concept would strengthen the bond between
parent and child ‘simply because you always want to choose the best for
your child’.
For more information about the Future Health Battle, please visit www.futurehealthbattle.nl or search for #FutureHealth on Twitter.