Environmental Impact
The more we can ‘prevent’ health conditions from occurring, rather than attempting to ‘cure’ them later at a more acute stage, the more we can minimise our impact on the environment.
Design interventions can help through clear communication and memorable campaigns (for example, Change4Life). Also, if people stop smoking, eat more healthily, take more exercise and avoid being overweight to reduce the likelihood of developing heart disease or suffering a stroke, this preventive approach has far less environmental impact than surgery and follow-up after a heart attack.
At the product level, design can reduce usage of materials and simplify their separation when a product is finally recycled or disposed of. Design thinking can also provide new insights when applied to the working of systems and processes.
Current medical thinking favours ‘single-use’ (or disposable) medical equipment, which reduces the risk of infections and legal liability compared to the cleaning and sterilisation that is required when instruments are reused. It may be hard to believe that this approach justifies the consequences of disposing of single-use medical products, made from high quality plastics and metals, to incineration or landfill. But this will remain the case, perhaps until better systems, processes and products can be found and these areas are ripe for design to make a difference.