AWARD YEAR
2017
CATEGORY
Body
GOALS
Good Health & Well-being
KEYWORDS
healthcare, hacking, social issues
COUNTRY
Netherlands
DESIGNED BY
Frank Kolkman (2015)
Thanks To:
Photography: Juuke Schoorl
Software: Riccardo Lardi, Marcel Helmer
Website: Henrik Nieratschker
Medical consulting: Dr. Martin Jaere (MSk Lab, ICH, London UK)
DIY Health consulting: Anne-Marie Geurink
General support: Professor Anthony Dunne, Dr. James Auger and all other tutors and staff (Design Interactions 2015, RCA, London UK), Professor Julia Cassim (D-Lab, KIT, Kyoto JP), Matthieu Cherubini, Jaime Garcia
Video: Dezeen (Ben Hobson, )
WEBSITE
http://www.opensurgery.net
OpenSurgery - a do-it-yourself surgery robot for domestic laparoscopy
DIY surgical robots as a critical alternative to increasingly expensive healthcare services.
OpenSurgery investigates the potential for advanced do-it-yourself surgical tools to plausibly support more accessible alternatives to increasingly expensive health services worldwide.
Inspiration for the project came from a large number of YouTube videos in which uninsured Americans perform medical hacks for others to imitate. These videos speak about how the profit-driven medical industries are forcing certain groups of people to look for treatment outside of the official systems.
Extrapolating on this phenomenon - OpenSurgery proposes a do-it-yourself robot assisted surgery system, that could theoretically be replicated and used almost anywhere at a mere fraction of the cost of commercial instruments.
However trading medical compliance for easy access admittedly raises a number of ethical, psychological and legal concerns. Therefore the project is not intended as an immediate solution but rather aims to facilitate discussion about possible alternative models of healthcare.