Associate Professor Leah Heiss

Associate Professor Leah Heiss is the Eva and Marc Besen International Research Chair in Design at Monash University; Chair of the Victorian Premier’s Design Awards; Co-chair of the Victorian Heart Institute New Technologies working group; and Designer in Residence at the Australian National Fabrication Facility. Leah is a leader in human-centred design and co-design for technologies, systems and services for healthcare. This includes the design of wearable and sensing technologies for acute care, ageing and hearing loss; and the co-design of models of care including for cancer, acquired brain injury, eating disorders, voluntary assisted dying and global health. She is currently working with the World Health Organisation (WHO), using design strategies to improve the uptake and implementation of WHO guidelines across countries and led the co-design consultation for the Statewide System for Integrated care of Mental Health and Addiction (Hamilton centre) with Turning Point.

In the last 10 years Leah has led the design and user experience for wearable health technologies and services for COVID monitoring in aged care, hearing loss, cardiovascular disease, loneliness, MRSA/sepsis and the design of smart mattress sensors for aged care. Leah’s design work has been recognised with six Australian Good Design Awards, including the 2018 Good Design Award of the Year; two Victorian Premier’s Design Awards; the CSIRO Design Innovation Award and in 2022 her ongoing contribution to design excellence and leadership was recognised with the Australian Women in Design Award. She has presented over 100 presentations and keynotes globally on the role of design in improving the lived experience of health technologies and systems. Her wearable technology designs have been exhibited to over 700,000 people across Australia, Europe and Asia and presented to the Victorian Royal Commission into Mental Health.

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