​Students from across The Creative School reimagine medical waste at Healthcare User Experience Lab

The Healthcare User Experience (HUE) Lab (opens in new window)  at The Creative School is back with its annual Student Design Jam, which aims to create better healthcare experiences for patients, practitioners, and caregivers through innovative design thinking. 

This year's design jam focused on planetary health - a significant pillar in modern medicine - and called on students from across The Creative School to participate. The jam challenged student teams to reimagine common medical waste and develop sustainable design thinking strategies to create innovative and practical applications. The HUE Lab has partnered with St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto to provide the medical waste for the challenge.

The medical industry generates significant waste, including unused medications, disposable medical supplies, and packaging that can be significantly harmful to the planet. HUE Lab's Student Design Jam offered a unique opportunity to reimagine new ways to use medical waste and repurpose it in a sustainable way. These initiatives have the potential to reduce waste, conserve resources, and mitigate the impact of the medical industry on the environment.

"Planetary health is the promotion of human health while preserving and respecting the environment, and it is a fundamental pillar of TMU's new medical school," remarked the Director of HUE Lab, Jessica Mudry. "As a HUE Lab researcher I spend a lot of time in hospitals, but I ask different kinds of questions than a standard clinician.  The Planetary Health Design Jam was actually born during a much earlier HUE initiative: the Vax and Snax campaign.  When I began to think about mass vaccination and how much waste was generated by each patient I started to think about the field of medicine as a whole.  Just how much waste does medicine generate?"

Empowering students to develop human-centred solutions

This year, five student teams registered for the event and used collaborative methodologies and interdisciplinary design principles to address the challenge of creating something new from medical waste. The iterative process encouraged students to engage with the participation of the healthcare user in the design process, which is a hallmark of successful user-experience research.

“The HUE Lab approaches design challenges using collaborative methodologies and creative knowledge mobilization to connect faculty, students, patients, and medical professionals,” said HUE Labs project coordinator Emmit-Jamal Brown. 

Charting a path toward a greener, more sustainable future will require unique solutions like this one that tackle the issue of medical waste in novel and innovative ways. As Mudry points out, if medicine were a country, it would be in the top 3 plastic polluters in the world. 

"A standard operation like a hysterectomy creates, on average, 20 lbs of garbage," said Mudry.  A mid-sized hospital can generate 3-5 tons of garbage a day.  Where does this garbage go?  Sadly, to the incinerator or, more likely, to the landfill.  The Design Jam's goal was to point to ways in which we could re-use and rethink medical waste and turn it into something useful, or beautiful or both.  Our winner, Taya Volk, did just that."

Encouraging sustainable design thinking with real-world applications

The HUE Lab's Student Design Jam is a unique initiative highlighting the importance of creative problem-solving in healthcare. By bringing together students that share a passion for healthcare and sustainability, the HUE Lab is creating a space for innovative thinking and collaboration that has the potential to transform healthcare.

The HUE Lab's Student Design Jam was not just an opportunity for students to engage in innovative and sustainable design thinking but also a chance to win $1,000 for their design, motivating students to think outside the box and develop creative solutions that health practitioners could implement in real-world settings. The winning design by Fashion student Taya Volk, who transformed her medical waste into upcycled flower pots, was selected based on its innovation, feasibility, and sustainability. 

"After thinking about ways that something could be repurposed, I was inspired by the current plants in my dorm room to make planters out of medical waste," said Volk. "I’ve always had a love for plants and a green thumb, so it only made sense for me to show that in my final design."

"Winning the award meant the world to me. As a university student, $1,000 is a lot of money, and now I’m able to use that money for future expenses. To say I was ecstatic would be an understatement, and I’m extremely grateful that I was given the opportunity to even participate in a competition like this one."

Reimagining medical waste is an important piece of the puzzle of building a sustainable future, and HUE Lab's Student Design Jam represents an exciting opportunity for students to positively impact the environment and the medical industry while showcasing student's sustainable design talent.

Interested in learning more about HUE Lab’s Student Design Jam? Check out HUE Lab’s ongoing initiatives (opens in new window)  and follow HUE Lab on Instagram (external link, opens in new window) .

The Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University

The Creative School is a dynamic faculty that is making a difference in new, unexplored ways. Made up of Canada’s top professional schools and transdisciplinary hubs in media, communication, design and cultural industries, The Creative School offers students an unparalleled global experience in the heart of downtown Toronto.