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Co-designing for the NHS: the development of sustainable theatre garments

Exploration of sustainable design alternatives for single-use medical garments

Author
Paul Rodgers, Euan Winton, Lewis Urquhart, Jonathan O'Reilly, Carole Anderson
Conference name
18th International Design Conference: 18th International Design Conference - Croatia, Dubrovnik
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/pds.2024.168
Published
May 16, 2024

NHS Scotland, one of the keystone healthcare providers in the UK, have recently set a wide variety of sustainability targets in an effort to mitigate waste and the intensive energy demands of healthcare. Medical garment production, management and design is an area in which design researchers can explore and offer solutions. This paper presents a series of co-design explorations to examine design alternatives to single-use theatre caps, the majority of which are currently disposed of routinely. Using a series of probes, major insights into how theatre cap design may be improved is presented.

Design HOPES is a collaborative design-led research initiative, comprising five Scottish Universities (University of Strathclyde, University of Dundee, Heriot Watt University, Abertay University, and the University of Edinburgh), NHS Scotland, the third sector, and design organisations.

This project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as part of the Future Observatory GTE Hub Programme at the Design Museum [grant number AH/Y00373X/1].

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