Health care is undergoing remarkable transformations in recent years that will lead to redefining the concept of care. Technology will be one of the key drivers of this change, thanks to the contribution of elements such as digitization, data science and scientific innovation.

These new tools offer us the ability to adapt, customize or produce from scratch more effective solutions to everyday needs. That is, we are able, and will be increasingly able with future technological developments, to take care of each patient as an individual element with different needs, tastes, and attitudes, not starting only and solely from the diagnosis of a pathology.

That change in health care has been further accelerated by the pandemic is a given: just think of the importance of digitization in the administration and monitoring of medical care outside hospitals, that is, all the technological aspects that have enabled remote monitoring of patients.

Another hot item in recent years has been the economic vulnerability of health care systems: increasingly, the quality of life and the availability of medical care for all will come through the capacity for prevention, which, in turn, can only be fostered through technological developments.

To meet all these new needs and put in place new and fundamental developments requires the collaboration of different figures, capable of working together, such as designers, makers, therapists, physicians, and of course people with disabilities and their caregivers.

What is co-design

It is what since the 1970s, a time when the need to involve end users in research was gaining increasing acceptance, was known as participatory design, or the ability to design a product or service through the involvement of various stakeholders in idea generation and concept design.

This is a new human-centered design approach to technology and, the focus on the outcome, has given a strong impetus to collaborative innovation in healthcare.

The method to develop and foster these solutions is Co-design, which can enable and facilitate processes, stimulate creativity to create new solutions, and improve people’s lives by generating innovation.