Future Hospital and a Manifesto of Care

Associate Professors Leah Heiss (Monash University) and Keely Macarow (RMIT University) discuss their ongoing investigation into medicalised augmented jewellery and the intersection between creativity and care, which has culminated in many wearable applications for the delivery of medical monitoring and drug delivery, including Heiss’s diabetes and Heiss and Macarow’s cardiac monitoring and SOS jewellery. The conversation centres on the ways in which their shared research interests—health and wellbeing, design and the creative arts—meet in health care settings and innovative design applications and solutions.

Associate Professor Leah Heiss is a Melbourne-based designer and Monash University academic working at the nexus of design, health and technology. Through collaborative projects, she has brought human-centred design to technologies for hearing loss, diabetes and pre-diabetes, cardiovascular disease, gut disease and loneliness. Her wearable technologies include jewellery that administers insulin, cardiac monitoring jewellery, swallowable devices that detect disease and emergency jewellery for times of medical crisis. Heiss is the Eva and Marc Besen International Research Chair in Design, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, Monash University.

Associate Professor Keely Macarow is Coordinator of Postgraduate Research and Coordinator of Creative Care in the School of Art at RMIT University. Macarow’s research is focused on social practice and the nexus between creative arts, social justice, health and wellbeing. She collaborates with designers and housing researchers based in Melbourne and Lund who produce creative works, publications and interventions in Australia and Sweden that advocate for homefullness (rather than homelessness), and has worked extensively in Australia and Sweden on interdisciplinary projects utilising creative, design and health practices in healthcare settings.