I’m sitting in the Denver airport ready to catch a plane to Aspen for the Aspen Design Summit (a partnership between the AIGA, Winterhouse, and The Rockefeller Foundation). It’s not a conference. There are 70 really amazing thinkers (like Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO and Robert Fabricant of Frog Design) split up to work on one of five projects to tackle rural poverty, rural healthcare, education in developing countries, healthy aging, and sustainable food. I’m working on Mayo Clinic’s Rural Health program:
Mayo Clinic Rural Health Program
The Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation will lead an initiative around rural health care delivery systems and how design can help to impove these systems to broaden their impact, efficiency, and reach. The initiative envisions what a massive, local rural community healthcare intervention might look like.
The fundamental goal of each studio is to develop a course that can be executed within 24 months to advance the challenges posed, including program definition and description; a business plan and funding requirements, and an implementation plan.
It’s gonna be awesome.