Co-creating healthcare solutions
Patients, doctors and local citizens worked together to co-create healthcare solutions that will help to improve people’s lives.
The challenge
“How can we make healthcare more understandable for everyone in a super diverse city?” was the challenge that this initiative wanted to tackle. The process was led by Comon – a collective of scientists, technologists and creatives run in partnership with the City of Ghent, Ghent University, De Krook Library and imec research centre. The collective’s objective is to make life better for people living in Ghent.
The initiative
Comon asked Ghent residents for their ideas on improving healthcare. They found that people from a diverse range of backgrounds wanted to make healthcare more understandable for everyone in the city.
Patients, health experts, policy-makers and doctors all took part in a wide-ranging co-creation process to come up with ideas to address the challenge. In a five-day, innovative process – a ‘Make-a-thon’ – students pushed forward with the ideas, turning them into prototypes.
The nine prototypes competed for prizes: Dolox, the first-placed device allows patients to track their pain levels, so it’s easy to report on when they speak to doctors and nurses. Other prototypes included Ringli, a phone bot that calls patients to prepare for their consultation, in their own language; and Medi Memo, a smart Memo that recaps and enriches your consultations.
What’s next?
The next steps will be to test the prototypes with more people in their own languages and an open call for consortia – to include hospitals, doctors, patients, and businesses – to develop and test the prototypes. Comon will coach the consortia in the development of the prototype and offer them a budget for further prototyping
