How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Robot Doctor

Remember doctor’s visits when you were growing up? The wooden tongue depressor. The well-worn stethoscope. That weird thing they jammed in your ears. And now, my children are having the same experience. But that is going to change.

As design harnesses digital, materials, and networking technologies, a very new health experience is just over the horizon. Proactive, lifestyle design, tracking real-time health data, non-invasive tools and custom “just for you” treatments based on your actual genome, are here. These are all real technologies, being used by ordinary people. Together they are leading us to “stage zero” detection and treatment which has the potential to double or better the lifespan of every first-world citizen. Not science fiction, the children of the 2020’s will only know this reality. Tongue depressors will be limited to school craft projects and popsicles. And it is all the product of technology and design.

This webinar will highlight to the macro factors shaping these realities, along with an in-depth exploration of the various impacts of and opportunities for design.

This webinar will be presented by Juhan Sonin, who teaches design and engineering at MIT and runs GoInvo (an open source healthcare design studio), who will share expertise and insights around:

• How smart phones are opening access to primary care
• How bathrooms are becoming healthrooms
• Re-envisioning the way patients interact with clinicians, pharmacy, the healthcare system, and each other, and their implications for design
• The need and impact of one human, one health record (based on open source concepts)

Presenter: Juhan Sonin, MIT, GoInvo