- Students also show designs ranging from sensory products to improve well-being for people with Parkinson’s disease to proposals for the future of tourism in Oban and products to help counteract the fears of digital surveillance in the increasing use of virtual assistants such as Alexa and Siri.
- The work will be on show in Glasgow from 1 – 9 June and at Candid Arts in London on 20 and 21June
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Erlend Prenderghast’s TrialSeek
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Students from the Innovation School at The Glasgow School of Art have unveiled designs for Precision Medicine in cancer care created as part of project working with 20 medical and healthcare professionals. The project was delivered in partnership with the Institute of Cancer Research at the University of Glasgow led byProfessor Nicol Keith.
Looking into the future where Precision Medicine has evolved the students considered what might happen in a cancer landscape ten years from now. Reflecting on the underlying complexities surrounding the future of health, technological acceleration and human agency, they have envisioned a future context, and produced products, services and experiences for the people who might live and work within it.
Erlend Prenderghasthas looked at the challenges in recruiting people for cancer trials. His approach, TrialSeek, is a service which gathers and analyses data on an individual’s lifestyle and environment so as to match them with clinical trials. By using this data is would be possible to match the right person with the right trial at the right time. In CapsuleBenjamin Alexander Laing addresses the dual challenges of how denial is used as a coping mechanism and cancer patients wishing not to be defined by their condition. Benjamin’s approach disrupts the current medication model though a service that helps patients track their own personal progression and offers them the chance to live their lives as they intend to.
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| Image: Tori Hamilton has looked at the future of tourism in her home town of Oban |
Along side the Precision Medicine project students unveiled self-generated projects undertaken including Tori Hamilton’sre-imagining tourism for her home town of Oban. Working with the local community they co-designed an approach which envisages a more sustainable form of tourism. Erlend Prenderghasthas addressed the issue of privacy in a time of increasing use of “help mates” such as Alexa and Siri. His Counterbugis a series of proposed accessories that would confuse the algorithms of virtual assistants and help to disperse some of the fears surrounding domestic spying and digital surveillance. Meanwhile, Monika Kantor has developed designs for experimental and sensory products to improve well-being for people with Parkinson’s disease.
Also on show at Degree Show are the outcomes of the fourth year in an ongoing collaboration with the Royal Bank of Scotland looking at the future of banking. Following co-designing approaches to banking for Generation Y and the future of banking and financial services looking ahead to 2030,this year the subject of the co-design project has been financial health.
“What is unique about this kind of collaboration is that there are essentially two groups of ‘learners’, both continually working together over an intensive period, exchanging knowledge, sharing ideas and ways of working to inform the direction the project took and the shape the outcomes,”says GSA Academic LeadKirsty Ross. “For the students the opportunity gives insight and real experience of the world of professional design practice. For the Royal Bank of Scotland it has been an opportunity to test their design methods and experiment with GSA’s user-centered design techniques.”
Innovation School Degree Show projects are on show in the newly refurbished Stow Building from 1 – 9 June 2019. They will then be on show at Candid Arts, 3-5 Torrens Street, London EC1V 1NQ on 20 and 21 June.
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For further information, images and interviews contact:
Lesley Booth
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Note for Editors
Precision Medicine
Personalised health is an approach to healthcare that puts the citizen at the centre of a discussion about their own care and well-being. This is possible due to the development of tailor-made diagnostic, treatment and prevention strategies, so that patients receive therapies that are specifically designed for them. Only through the collaboration between clinical scientists, medical practitioners, pharmaceutical companies and designers, capable of giving form to the future, can the potential of this technological breakthrough deliver the promise of better lives for all our fellow citizens.
Over the next 10 years, as the proportion of the population over 60 continues to rise, a key focus for medical research and practice will be on the preservation of health rather than simply the treatment of episodic illness and diseases. This shift will require a change in mindset across the medical profession, the health sector and industry that delivers these; from providers to patients, and from doctors to data.
Since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, scientists have made great progress in understanding how changes in our DNA can affect how the cells in our bodies work and cause diseases. These advances and increases in scientific knowledge allow doctors to be more detailed, more precise, in their practice.
Thanks to scientific research, more than half of people will survive for at least 10 years. For centuries, clinicians categorised the disease based on the location, for example ‘breast cancer’, with oncologists specialising in treating the cancer of one particular organ or location within the body. In contrast to the long history of the disease. Recently, a blood test, called a liquid biopsy, has been developed to screen for cancer by detecting tiny bits of DNA released by cancer cells into the blood. This transformation in the process of detecting cancer promises to have remarkable consequences for how it can be treated, and enormous potential to design opportunities to improve the lives of patients, help deliver healthcare services and support the work of doctors and surgeons.