Embassy of Health

At the Embassy of Health design for (future) healthcare will be on display at the exhibition ‘Chronic Health: If not Us the Who?’ at the Dutch Design Week 2018 and a cutting-edge program will be held with (inter)national speakers, workshops and expert meetings.

What is the Embassy of Health?

The Embassy of Health is a platform for exploring new, person-centred and design-driven ways and of tackling challenges in health and wellbeing. As a partnership between six Dutch organizations – VanBerlo, Waag, Philips, Maxima Medisch Centrum, Dutch Design Foundation, and U CREATE– we bring together diverse perspectives that include technology, design, science, the arts and front-line healthcare. The first physical manifestation of our activities was an exhibition entitled ‘Chronic Health: Designing a Healthy Future’ at the Dutch Design Week 2017.

What does Embassy of Health stand for?

The Embassy of Health stimulates creative and often disruptive thinking to help health professionals, policymakers, patients and the general public understand and fulfil their roles in the healthcare possibilities of the future. It is an open platform that welcomes broad participation and stimulates crossover collaborations in healthcare for now, near future and future. A common design criterion throughout each one is empathy; the ability to see and experience through the eyes of another in order to design meaningful and appropriate products, services, experiences, and systems that always have a strong person-centred dimension. Next to that the ethics of future health design is a major point of interest to the Embassy.

What are the ambitions of the Embassy of Health?

As a relatively new venture, the Embassy of Health is currently focused on informing and inspiring people to embrace design thinking and doing in healthcare. This takes place, for example, through dialogue or exhibitions that trigger discussion on concepts ranging from artificial wombs to robots that enable people to operate on themselves. A logical progression from will then be to facilitate co-creation and bring the right partners together, while empowering healthcare professionals to advocate for new solutions. Creating a deeper understanding among citizens of the new potentials of the emerging new health and wellbeing landscape is also crucial.

Our longer-term ambition is to scale up and integrate design thinking into healthcare policymaking, while helping ensure the next generation of health providers and users is properly equipped to meet future health challenges.