What is a design studio doing in a hospital?

The HELIX team to participate in London Design Festival by opening up their studio to the public, hospital staff and patients for 4 days in September.

People often ask us why there is a design studio in a hospital, and it is a reminder to us that design is still a little understood discipline outside of our industry. When people discover we are a design studio, some imagine that we are a graphics bureau for the trust’s internal communications, or that we are working on the architecture of the hospital around us. These are both worthy pursuits, but not our focus. The truth is that we are focused on product and service innovation across the broader healthcare spectrum. For us, the logic is clear; design and innovation are integral to each other, and innovation is essential for healthcare in the 21st century.

Design has been an incredible force in the reinvention of many sectors over the last decade as smartphones have come of age, and person-to-person and person-to-business communications have taken a huge leap forwards. We now shop differently, chat differently, travel differently and bank differently. Technology has changed the school classroom, our working day and the way we date and socialise. We also see every day in the press how design and technology is challenging the very notion of driving a car. Health is next on the innovation agenda, and design has an unprecedented role to play in helping us stay healthy, manage illness and access health services.

As healthcare becomes more complicated and personal, we are moving from a world of ‘doctor knows best’ to one of the expert patient; from ‘one size fits all’ to personal medicine; from best guess to quantified self. Design skills are needed to mediate and facilitate these exciting changes, ensuring that healthcare is accessible and fairly available, and delivered in an efficient fashion that society can afford.

Increasingly the hospital is being seen as a sub-optimum place for many patients to be. Hospitals can be hotbeds for infection and physical deterioration through inactivity. The modern hospital has come about from a need to co-locate expertise and equipment so as to maximise availability to patients. Emerging technologies mean that physical proximity of doctor and patient are not always a prerequisite to good care. We believe that a design-led approach to creating healthcare services of the future is key to the successful implementation of all this potential.

We believe HELIX is making a great start by installing a culture of design at the heart of healthcare innovation. Our design studio, embedded in a hospital, provides a unique petri dish for collaborative innovation between designers, clinicians, patients and members of the public.

Our current projects range from hospital patient experience to chronic disease management, to staying fit and healthy. Some projects tie-in directly to the complex ecosystem of the NHS Trust we sit within, while others take innovation to the community.

HELIX has been operating for almost two years now, and has had its studio in place for just over half a year. This is a great time for us to open our doors wide and show the public some of our projects and work in progress.

There are three aspects to our ‘open studio’ exhibition:

• Our award-winning studio building, designed by RCA student architects.
• Our project work, some examples of innovations that we have created and are in the process of bringing to market.
• Our work in progress – a challenge to visitors! We are currently exploring how a design-led approach can have a positive impact on the way we die. We welcome the thoughts of all our visitors on this subject. More details can be found here.

In conjunction with the London Design Festival, we are opening our studio this Sunday (20th) and Monday (21st), and the following Friday (25th) and Saturday (26th). We hope this gives everyone a chance to visit and talk to us about health and design.

HELIX aims to put ‘health and design’ firmly on the London design map, perhaps this event can be the start of a ‘health quarter’ as a regular feature of the London Design Festival.

Click here to tweet about this event

Further details

More inforation about the event
Studio location – map and directions
Event page on Facebook
For any further enquiries about this event, contact Matthew Harrison