What if patients, healthcare professionals and designers would work together on open design and digital fabrication to develop personal care solutions? Discover the possibilities of digital fabrication for you as a healthcare professional, informal caregiver or as a citizen with a care need. Or see what you can attribute, as open-source designer or developer, to the personal needs of patients.
A 3D-printed finger splint? An open-source prosthesis? A custom designed tricycle? A simplified TV remote control for Alzheimer patients? Or self-developed lamps for a wheelchair?
With the advent of digital manufacturing technology and the accessibility of online knowledge, it is possible for citizens and healthcare professionals to develop (high-quality) care applications themselves or to improve existing tools.
But how does that work exactly? What can you do as a professional with digital manufacturing? How can you, as a caregiver or someone with a care demand, realize design solutions? What do you need for that? Where can you go for support and expertise? And, what about the legal limits?
In this MakeHealth MeetUp, experts explain the opportunities and challenges of ‘makeable healthcare’ and show inspiring examples. Afterwards we discuss what the impact of this development means for individual situations or professional practice.
Made4You & Careables
In addition to the MeetUps, we will soon start a development course in which we will develop a number of open-source design applications for care at Fablab Amsterdam. Under the guidance of experts, we will develop the ideas into a working prototype, clear description and accessible blueprints.
We will work with a newly developed platform Careables, which will allow us to co-create open source care solutions and spread them to a wider audience.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 780298.
