October 12, 2017
Newsletter

Let’s Talk About:

Moving Medicine Forward

User experience and design probably aren’t the first words that come to mind when you think of healthcare, but the industry is starting to treat design like a first-class citizen when it comes to advances in medical technology. Smart bandages that transmit data, Fitbits for your mouth, and robot therapists may sound too good to be true (and like something out of a sci-fi novel), but they’re real breakthroughs, ones that have been created with people like you in mind.

At Viget, we’ve had the pleasure of working with many clients in medicine and healthcare. We’ve worked with these organizations to help define their brands, improve their websites, and build patient care management systems. We’ve even dabbled in our own healthcare explorations, resulting in the creation of Florence, a friendly nurse chatbot that helps patients adhere to their medication regimens. We’re excited about what is happening in healthcare today, and we look forward to the partnerships, both old and new, that allow us to play a small role in helping to move this industry forward.

Florence: A Viget Exploration


Community Thoughts on Moving Medicine Forward...

  1. 1. Can An Army Of Tech-Equipped Health Workers Bring Medicine To Remote Villages? “Last Mile Health hires workers with the equivalent of a sixth to twelfth grade education, many of whom have never had jobs before, and puts them through a six-month training program. It teaches them about community mapping, family planning, how to identify triggers for disease outbreaks, basic first aid, and other skills. Then it arms the workers with backpacks full of diagnostic devices and basic drugs, like malaria pills and antibiotics, and sends them into the countryside.”
  2. 2. The next generation of bandages will detect infections, release medicine, and more. When tech and medicine meet, everyone benefits. The tech doesn’t have to be a new MRI or laser printed organs, either — even the lowly bandage can benefit from an upgrade. Different researchers worldwide are using their particular expertise to develop a host of newer, smarter, more effective bandages; many of which are steadily making their way out of the lab and into the real world. Here’s a quick overview of all the awesome bandage tech that you can expect to see in the not-so-distant future.
  3. 3. The Chatbot Therapist Will See You Now “Created by a team of Stanford psychologists and AI experts, Woebot uses brief daily chat conversations, mood tracking, curated videos, and word games to help people manage mental health. After spending the last year building a beta and collecting clinical data, Woebot Labs Inc. just launched the full commercial product—a cheeky, personalized chatbot that checks on you once a day for the price of $39 a month.”
  4. 4. Calling All Snackers: Here Comes a Fitbit for Your Mouth “While wearables have gotten pretty good at tracking a range of health-related activities, there’s still no simple, automated, unobtrusive way to track one of the vital things we all do every day: eat.”
  5. 5. How Redesigning The Abrasive Alarms Of Hospital Soundscapes Can Save Lives “Conducting extensive research on the needs of health care providers and alarm fatigue—a condition that occurs when people become desensitized after being exposed to too many alerts—Sen is currently prototyping sound environments that help patients and providers cut through the clamor, potentially improving both patient health and medical care in the process.”

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