Future Hospital GRIP
Bringing together an interdisciplinary team to investigate what Future Hospital means in a time of innovation, change and disruption.
Investigators
- Associate Professor Leah Heiss
- Professor Daphne Flynn Monash Art, Design and Architecture
Undertaken within
A new approach for the hospital must appreciate how patients, staff and visitors might work in and use hospital places and services in future environments shared with as-yet-unknown machines, devices and modes of communication.
Professor Daphne Flynn, Director, Monash Design Health Collab
- Who is the future patient and what are their needs?
- What is needed to create a new hospital experience?
- How can new and emerging technologies best become part of the future of patient care and healthcare work?
- How will consumer-driven care transform the way we design for our future health needs?
- How are we responding to changes in remote and distributed care, supported by emerging technologies?
- How is the acquisition and use of personal and big data informing models of care?
- How might emerging practices in precision and personalized medicine, machine learning and robotics impact on the ways that hospitals deliver care?
- How can we design a user-centred experience of healthcare for healthcare workers, patients and their families?
Hospitals have been at the epicentre of health care for centuries, underpinned by a model of centralized specialist care delivered to patients. New medical technologies, changing clinical expertise and medical specializations have forced hospital retrofits and bolted on features rather than a holistic re-design based on the patient experience and the needs of health care staff.
This is compounded by changes in healthcare delivery models, personalised and precision medicine and the emergence of machine learning in diagnosis and treatment. The future hospital is a distributed system in which the patient is at the centre of an ecosystem of care that operates across many scales including devices, spaces, architectures and systems.
Incremental change will not deliver the transformation required to meet the demographic, technological, environmental and consumer changes that are now upon us.
We propose to deliver transformational impact for Australian healthcare. We will bring together an interdisciplinary team of leading Monash academic leaders, researchers, and PhD researchers working with government, public and private sector stakeholders to rethink and redesign the Future Hospital.
The opportunity
- Opportunity to be part of an interdisciplinary cohort of students all focused on topics related to the Future Hospital
- The chance to address real-world challenges being faced by industry – to do a PhD that has impact
- Professional development targeted towards industry needs
- Mentoring from industry sponsors and opportunity to be embedded in industry
Become part of the team
A Graduate Research Industry Partnership (GRIP) is an interdisciplinary collaboration between industry partners, Monash academic leaders, researchers and PhD candidates. It offers partners access to thought leadership and international best practice of ‘what works’ in this dynamic field. Partner organisations benefit from embedded PhD researchers dedicated to addressing industry-identified challenges.
Together, we aim to understand the broader picture of healthcare delivery and future emerging needs, extending and applying our knowledge to solve practical problems and challenges faced by our partners in Australia and internationally.
Working collaboratively across HASS and STEM disciplines, Monash University is in a unique position to lead the transformation of healthcare through this Future Hospitals Initiative.
The Future Hospital GRIP encompasses projects across scales, from sensors and devices through to spaces for care, architecture, and systems of care. At MADA, we provide capabilities to help deliver high impact projects that range from humanity centred design to cultural competency for healthcare.
Advantages for students
This GRIP proposal is being led by Professor Daphne Flynn and Associate Professor Leah Heiss from Design Health Collab at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture. It draws together experts in human-centred design, device and service design, data visualisation, health design, accessible and flexible architecture, and a range of other expertise areas.
We are looking for academic partners across Monash who would be interested in supervising or co-supervising a PhD student on a theme within Future Hospital that meets the research needs of an industry partner. Proposed projects can be within a single discipline, can be interdisciplinary within a faculty, or can cut across faculties.
If you would like to discuss possible research projects please contact daphne.flynn@monash.edu or leah.heiss@monash.edu
You should think about the industry partner(s) you might be able to bring to the GRIP. Each PhD project will require industry funding of $15,000 p/a for the stipend (Monash will fund the other $15,000), plus project costs, estimated at $20,000-$35,000 p/a. In return, the Industry Partner(s) will have a dedicated researcher working to solve a problem identified by the industry partner as important to their needs. Past experience suggests that PhD projects are most likely to be a success where supervisors have a pre-existing strong relationship with the industry partner.