Themaker culture how to#
Themaker culture full#

And that is symbolic of how we could co-create and co-design all kinds of devices to better serve people. Susannah: Well, so one that I’m inspired by is the VA, for example, is now starting to co-design and co-create better prosthetics for our wounded warriors who are coming home.Unity: So, what are some of the things that you think are possible from this initiative or this concept, as more, makers, creators, inventors start participating in the creation of health?.The Potential in the Creation of Tools Through the Invent Health Initiative We really don’t have that in healthcare in terms of hardware and devices. I would love to see the investor community and the startup community create a platform where people can trade ideas. And the reason why I’m here and wanted to announce it here, is that I see such an opportunity for investors and startup companies. And ideas are swelling up from patients and caregivers. And additive printing and all the ways that manufacturing costs are dropping. Susannah: What I’m looking out at the landscape and seeing is that the next wave to come towards us is the maker movement.Susannah: These devices, these medical devices, assistive devices.We in healthcare need to prepare for the moment when there’s 3D printers everywhere, and people start to create these things. And what I really believe is that we need to prepare for the maker movement. And we all need to be part of solving our own problems in healthcare. Susannah: So, part of it is the idea that we all need to be part of an innovation nation.Susannah: We want to make it easier for people to understand what the regulations are so that they can come in to us and we can lower those barriers to entry for innovation and hardware.

Themaker culture how to#

And the FDA knows that there are great innovators out there who could bring this unexpected resource of their vision, their ideas, but they just don’t even know how to approach the regulations. For example, there are not a lot of Americans who know the difference between a class 1, class 2, class 3 device at the FDA.

Susannah: And then coming to government I saw that there are pockets of people all around HHS who want to lower the barriers to entry for innovation and hardware.

And, realizing that we have so much to learn from people who are solving their own problems, and how might we lower the barriers to entry?

Susannah: These were individuals and companies.

Unity: These were just individuals? Or companies?.

And I realized that a lot of people aren’t necessarily paying attention especially in government.

And, about five years ago they started showing me devices that they’d created to solve a problem in their own lives. Back when it was still sort of list serves and Excel spreadsheets. They were the ones who were already using data. And they were the people who showed me 15 years ago about crowdsourcing towards a diagnosis. A lot of what I did prior to taking this role was follow the alpha geeks of healthcare.

Susannah: In my field work I started noticing this about five years ago.

And, what I want to do is open the aperture of technology at HHS to include not just software, and IT, and electronic health records which is important.

Susannah: So, we are launching today publically a new initiative from the HHS IDEA Lab and that’s called Invent Health.

What effect it was having on patients and caregivers. People were looking at the business impact, but nobody was looking at the social impact.

Susannah: So, the year 2000 was the first time that I started looking at the impact of technology on healthcare.

And what we were looking for was where are the spaces in terms of the social impact of the internet? That change needed to happen, should happen, and we wanted to study the aspect that was making such an impact on people, and that is healthcare.

Susannah Fox: I was assigned to study healthcare when I was at the Pew Research Center.

Themaker culture full#

Show Notes and Key Takeaways (Access the full transcript here.) LOCATION: StartUp Health Festival, San Francisco, CA