In prior work, we have highlighted an opportunity to create preferable futures in health, care and wellbeing, which tackle the challenges of 21st century medicine, using the emerging skills from the disciplines of Health Web Science (HWS) and Medicine 2.0. In so doing, the role of design expertise in collaboration with specialists in building digital conduits for health is gaining traction and is critical to sustainable success. Within a dynamic digital age, the understanding and implementation of design systems and innovative networks can create person-centred care experiences and services, which are relevant to target audiences, and markets. Deep insights into the needs of people and the imagination of end-users are vital for creating new design-led digital solutions and experiences in understanding the social, psychological and behavioural dimensions of illness and the implications of transformational change.

The proposed panel will overview the contributions of HWS and Medicine 2.0, and continue laying the foundations for the need for design to be embedded in the development of digital technologies for health care.

Grant Cumming, University of the Highlands and Islands, will provide an overview of why HWS and Medicine 2.0 underpin and contribute to the understanding of digital interventions. Tara French, DHI, Glasgow School of Art, will introduce a new model of health care innovation commissioned in Scotland, the Digital Health Institute, and provide exemplars of innovations resulting from this initiative. Lynn-Sayers McHattie, Glasgow School of Art, will discuss the role of design which is embedded in the understanding of social processes through developing networks of extreme expertise and collaborations between design researchers and practitioners, health professionals, clinicians, patients and other stakeholders around substantive issues that in turn will transform the patient experience. Cara Broadley, Glasgow School of Art, will discuss how the emotive qualities of visual representation can support communication and comprehension within interdisciplinary teams and promote empathy and compassion in person-centred approaches.