The Netherlands has a dynamic range of companies that are increasingly starting to work outside their own specific sectors. This creates new combinations between businesses from a variety of fields, also known as ‘crossovers’. These crossovers have the potential to develop extremely innovative products and services, and that offers many social benefits: it paves the way for finding solutions to the problems that our society struggles with.
Among the top sectors, the creative sector is in the best position to successfully bring about fruitful crossovers. Designers appear to have the unique ability to develop new initiatives with other disciplines and generate support for them. We have already published three books with great examples of what that can lead to.
This fourth book is something new: a special edition about the extraordinary collaboration between the creative industries and the healthcare sector. Currently, promoting healthy and active aging is indeed a major challenge for our society. Our population is getting older and the traditional welfare state is a thing of the past. That requires solutions which make people less dependent on professional healthcare and allow them to live independently for longer, as well as smart tools that assist in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
How can the design sector contribute to these goals? This book reveals a range of successful, innovative case studies where the creative sector plays a major role. They include collaborative solutions for self care and prevention, for those that need assistance, for home care and informal carers, for residents and caregivers in nursing homes, and for patients and medical staff at hospitals. Like games that can help children with anxiety disorders, online platforms and smart patches to monitor patients at home, interactive tables and benches for people with dementia and apps that improve the performance of surgeons.
Each and every one is the result of designers, engineers, scientists and healthcare professionals who think outside the box and have come together at just the right moment to create new business opportunities. With this book, clicknl, the Creative Industries Fund nl, the Federatie Dutch Creative Industries, the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and the Dutch Creative Council want to ensure that it’s even easier for these parties to find each other.
Linde Gonggrijp
Director clicknl