MSc Healthcare & Design

Imperial College London & Royal College of Art

The Course

The MSc/MRes course in Healthcare & Design is a unique interdisciplinary programme that draws on the complementary expertise from the RCA's School of Design and Helen Hamlyn Design Centre and the healthcare expertise from Imperial College London's medical faculty and the Helix Centre based at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington London.

I developed an awareness of the role and value of design in solving healthcare challenges, as well as a multi-professional perspective on problem-solving and the importance of clinical/design collaboration.

The programme introduced me to a range of research techniques, tools, and frameworks in the fields of design and innovation, and offered an environment in which to develop design-led skills to rapidly research, synthesise, and prototype a solution to a healthcare challenge.

Design and Innovation Project

My team and I utilised a design-led approach to tackle improving accessibility for patients with macular degeneration.

Macular degeneration damages the central part of our vision, leaving our peripheral vision unaffected. Therefore, we designed an attachment for glasses to project important information to a user's peripheries.

My key role in this project was researching and designing the internal circuitry of this device, working within the size constraints and device requirements.

Design Led Innovation in Healthcare Project

We were introduced to wicked problems and tasked with mapping the complex and interconnected nature of healthcare records.

Healthcare records have evolved significantly over time, with each evolution bringing its own challenges and complexities. We therefore decided to map this wicked problem in a three-dimensional space, demonstrating how the stakeholders, sources, mediums, and security evolve over time.

My role in this project included the initial research of the different aspects of healthcare records, and the design and presentation of the wicked problem.

Designing for Behavioural Change Project

During this module, we focused on the psychological theory of behaviour change and the COM-B model. We consequently developed and prototyped a tool to improve posture during video calling.

I was primarily working on the development of this prototype, utilising open-source tools and libraries such as the ResNet model in TensorFlow.js. A live demo of this project can be found here (not maintained).