Growing up, my dad personified the word “hobbyist.” Though a recording engineer by trade, he was always building model cars or ships, crafting railroad trestles from toothpicks and scrap wood, or rigging together electric (ok, psychedelic) light displays for the fun of it. He never met a project he couldn’t tackle, though resources and time would sometimes cause him to hit the pause button.
He’s likely to be intrigued by the makerspace movement, which I myself recently learned about via a digital innovation session at the North Georgia Digital Economy Conference. A Makerspace is, according to Wikipedia, a “community-operated workspace where people with common interests, often in computers, technology, science, digital art or electronic art, meet, socialize and/or collaborate.” Essentially, they are spaces where do-it-yourselfers gather to learn from one another and make things that interest them.
Makerspaces obviously lend themselves to hands-on design. Their Hackerspace counterparts cater to those more interested in coding and software, though the two phrases seem to often be used interchangeably.
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Several conference panelists brought up the notion of makerspaces as a key part of the digital innovation process. Naturally, my thoughts turned to healthcare – especially when I learned that a makerspace was responsible for the consumer-friendly, desktop 3-D printer. It makes sense, then, to think that healthcare’s next great innovation could potentially start as an idea put together by a STEM student in a makerspace.
A quick search online yielded just a few items related to makerspaces, healthcare and medical devices:
The U.S. Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center, and Parallax Inc. sponsored a makerspace-type competition at the beginning of 2013 to encourage students to create the “next generation of medical innovation.” The competition encouraged students to “[u]se microcontrollers and sensors to create open-source medical applications and products for possible use in the healthcare industry, medical simulation training, and more.” You can view the list of winners here. (I’m especially intrigued by mDocInABox and BARFS.) Winners will be recognized at the International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare in San Francisco next month.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation awarded a grant to establish a hospital makerspace that will “promote nurses as inventors of innovative solutions in medical technology.” Though the website doesn’t mention who received the grant, it’s exciting to think that a space will be created for nurses to “test ideas and invent medical technologies and devices to improve the quality of care in acute settings.”
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The potential for the makerspace movement to impact healthcare innovation is huge. Imagine how fast it would take off if events were hosted or sponsored by organizations like HIMSS, but at the middle school or high school levels? Even startup incubator and accelerator programs could create offshoot programs with a DIY mindset.
As my dad will tell you, innovation and creativity are only limited by time, money and passion, which certainly isn’t lacking in healthcare. It will be interesting to see who or what swoops in to provide the space and resources for the next iteration of healthcare innovation.
