Transformative innovations for health: a gathering of change-makers

Published in JHH15.1 – Transformative innovation in healthcare

On November 18 2017 the BHMA held a conference in collaboration with the Scientific and Medical Network. Hosted by The University of Westminster’s Centre for Resilience, the meeting brought change-makers together to celebrate the future they are working to create.

20th century medicine has focused on smaller and smaller parts with astonishing success: triumphant in infections, deficiency diseases, with surgical excisions and transplants, intensive care and anaesthetics. But the precision of medical science is unraveling as 21st century medicine is forced to confront whole person (indeed whole society) problems: chronic degenerative and inflammatory diseases, stress-, environment- and lifestyle-mediated diseases, addictions and psychological disorders.

Bio-technical single-solution approaches won’t cure them. If, as sci-fi author William Gibson once said, the future is already with us but unevenly distributed, the multitude of possibilities include some we would like to live in but many that we would not. Since the choices we are making now will re-shape the world, where might we find seeds of desirable new paradigms for healthcare? We brought some notable change-makers together to celebrate the future they are working to create.

The graphic record below, of what proved to be a very stimulating conference, was crafted as the day unfolded by Helena Maxwell from Inky Thinking.