Design for Health 4.0: Exploration of a New Area

Driven by networked Electronic Health Record systems, Artificial Intelligence, real-time data from wearable devices with an overlay of invisible user interfaces and improved analytics, Health 4.0 is changing the healthcare industry. The focus on collaboration, coherence, and convergence that will make healthcare more predictive and personalised. Furthermore, Health 4.0 realises the value of data more consistently and effectively. It can pinpoint areas of improvement and enable more informed decisions. What it also does is help move the entire healthcare industry from a system that is reactive and focused on fee-for-service to a system that is value-based, which measures outcomes and ensures proactive prevention.

In this paper, the authors will first explore the realm of the emerging area of Health 4.0 and identify its opportunities and challenges. This includes understanding the relevant base technologies as well as the design principles for the realization of smart healthcare product, systems and product-service-systems of the future. Following on from there, the authors focus on the role of design in the specific context of healthcare.