Project Video
Project Background
About Collaboration
The project is part of a “Healthcare and care through distance spanning solutions” initiative. It was initiated by the Nordic Council of Ministers, aiming to bring environmental,social and economic sustainability goals for the Nordic region together in the development of the healthcare systems.
Field Research
We were invited to visit the healthcare center at Storuman, a small locality in Västerbotten County in Northern Sweden. This allows us to observe and interview the patients and healthcare providers.
Observed Issues
(1) The inhabitants lived around 60-100 km away from the nearest hospital, which makes medical care inaccessible
(2) The majority of the population are aged between 45-75 years old, which prevents them from getting access to medical system during emergency
(3) The healthcare system in rural areas has failed to shift focus from sick care to preventive healthcare
Redefine Medical Vision In 2030
The Nordic Region is the most sustainable and integrated region in the world. Social care & healthcare services are integrated, and innovations developed in different regions are used across the Nordics.
Case Study: Sleep Deprivation
Sleep is considered as a crucial aspect of human well-being. This project uses sleep deprivation as a case study, as it underscores the need for continuous data gathering from day and night, for effective preventive healthcare.
How Might We
The Challenges
The current challenges with sleeping data in Northern Sweden are listed below
How Might We
Building trust and motivation among inhabitants to share their sleep data is crucial. This ensures that the preventive healthcare system has enough sleep data to establish further connections with healthcare providers, inhabitants, and local communities.
System Overview
System Design
The system overview summarize the entire design of sleeping data system from data gethering, AI analyzing to empowering preventive healthcare system within communities.
Data Integrity
Data Integrity
Data integrity means that their personal sleeping health data is handled with utmost care and privacy. This includes obtaining their explicit consent before data is shared, used for early diagnosis, or consolidated for community benefits. It is about ensuring that the data remains accurate, consistent and trustworthy throughout its lifecycle, and is only used in ways that the inhabitants have agreed to.
From Inhabitants
UNA (The tangible token) serves as a tangible artifact that emphasizes the user’s conscious decision to give consent to the phone interface to access their health data. It is a key that connects to an individual’s medical ID & sleeping data to ensure medical integrity. It adds another conscious layer for the inhabitants to rethink about sharing personal health data
We think of UNA as a key that connects to individual medical ID and sleeping data to ensure medical integrity. It adds another conscious layer for the inhabitants to rethink about whether or not they should share their sleeping data and what type of sleeping data should be shared.
From Healthcare Providers
Healthcare provider seeks the permission from individual inhabitants to get access to their sleeping data in order to act on it later.
From the perspective of healthcare providers, once data-sharing permission is granted from inhabitants, the inhabitant’s profile image will be shown with a green tick icon attached besides. This means that they will be able to access personal sleeping data.
Sense of Community
Sense of Community
The community here is composed of individuals united by a shared objective of improving sleep quality. It promotes interaction, collaboration, and support especially in fostering healthy sleep habits. To strengthen the sense of community, we factored in the openness of inhabitants to new solutions because of their can-do attitudes, their familiarity with each other, and the qualification of healthcare providers as mentors.
From Inhabitants
Inhabitants connecting with one another based on similar goals & interests to enhance sleeping quality. They will be categorized into different communities that serve specific goals & interests.
From Healthcare Providers
Healthcare providers connect inhabitants from the same community together
Healthcare providers act as mentors, focusing on community interaction rather than individual consultations. If members struggle with sleep deprivation due to unhealthy routines, the issue should be tackled within the community first. If no solutions are found, providers intervene by organizing events or online meetings to offer professional advice to this specific group.
Empowerment of Preventive Healthcare
Empowerment of Preventive Healthcare
We believe that health is often not valued until sickness arrives. Therefore, we place special emphasis on preventive healthcare in remote areas. We monitor residents' health data continuously and make it actionable by linking it with healthcare providers earlier, preventing it from becoming acute.
From Inhabitants
Users employ UNA, a physical token that collects and stores health data, ensuring continuous monitoring throughout the day. They also use LAC, a bed sheet equipped with sensors, for uninterrupted health monitoring during the night. This design aims to provide a seamless and unobtrusive health monitoring experience for the end users
UNA: The Physical Token
LAC: The Bed Sheet With Sensors
From Healthcare Providers
With sleeping reports at hand (generated by AI), healthcare providers will take the reports as reference to make final examinations.
AI: The Magic Behind The Scene
In this ecosystem, AI acts as a mediator between inhabitants & health-care providers. AI will evaluate the possibility of each of these potential risks by learning individual sleeping data overtime and provide sleeping insights to healthcare providers as references
