Bodies and Buildings Class 5: Ebola outbreak, the power to change the rules

The past two weeks in class we spent time first paying attention to the Ebola crisis, then trying to map out the system as we understand it.

While much of health technology has come to focus on in hospital systems, electronic health records, and chronic disease management, we wanted to see what we could envision for an acute and rapidly growing outbreak.

Students presented ideas for what to do about the crisis using their skills as creative technologists at ITP. It was a humbling reminder of how hard it is to be helpful when the core underlying technologies are not present – available internet, handheld devices.

Here are two sources students found that were hard to read and watch but gave more context than TV news sources:

VICE News: Monrovia in Chaos

WSJ: For Want of Gloves Doctors Die

We then shifted to talk about the power to change the rules in a system, and began the shift to “buildings” and how a much the less threatening but still pervasive problem of sick building syndrome was addressed through rule changes.

For midterms, students will write an OpEd – considering the format as if it were an interaction design to get you to do something, or change your mind.