At the Royal College of Art
Indri Tulusan / Interaction Design
As western economies struggle with escalating healthcare costs, there are growing calls for a paradigm shift from a system that simply treats patients to a model for health services in which the focus is on prevention rather than cure.
Within this context, there has been rapid growth in the market for self-monitoring and self-diagnosis products that enable people to take a more proactive approach to managing their own health. But, according to Helen Hamlyn Research Associate Indri Tulusan, there is an 'in between' space between self help and the expert help of medical professionals that has received relatively little attention from designers, manufacturers, service or social providers.
This is the social network of friends, family, work colleagues and neighbourhood facilities such as health food shops and fitness centres which operates alongside the GP or hospital professionals in helping us to maintain our health.
Tulusan's study is a collaboration between the RCA's Department of Interaction Design, healthcare product designers Pearson Matthews and mobile network company Orange. It has identified the social network as a complementary healthcare model and given it a name: Circles of Care. "The question we sought to answer," she explains, "is what kind of new circles of care can be evolved and what new services are needed to sustain them?"
The project began with a cross-cultural analysis of individual attitudes to maintaining health by focusing on a user group of 20 people (ten in the UK, ten in India and Italy) who had recently moved to a new town or country, necessitating the creation of a new circle of care.
Displacement was the key factor to get people to focus on the social relationships that support their health and a user research exercise invited participants to define their own circle of care on a glove.
The findings of this research revealed that people have three universal requirements to support their own health: fitness of body, autonomy of mind and relatedness to others. The study chose to explore this third aspect in greater detail, creating a Circles of Care map which addresses health activities across the span of different life events, from childhood to old age via leaving home, marriage and having a family.
The study identified the main activators and patterns of behaviour within circles of care, such as family caring, partnering and friends coaching. From these insights, a series of eight service narratives were created which illustrate how the space between self-help and expert help can be populated with new services that activate the social network. Some services use network technology: Health Heritage Blog, for example, is an online family health diary that dispersed family members can access and contribute to wherever they are living in the world.
The main output of the project is a special publication which sets out a manifesto for the Circles of Care model. This describes its main characteristics and the opportunities for new services to be created. "The study has identified a neglected terrain in design for healthcare," says Mike Pearson of Pearson Matthews. "Now the aim must be to flesh out an exciting concept with case studies to demonstrate its potential." Stephen Hope, international research manager at Orange, adds: "The value of this research is in a people-centred approach that provides the glue for the technical framework."
research partners: Orange and Pearson Matthews