CIBM Retreat Keynote Presentation:

As health care migrates from the clinic and hospital to the home and community there is increasing demands for really useful health information technologies (HIT) that support patient self-management and engagement in clinical care. Yet most of the information technologies available to patients are replicates of or extensions of tools originally built for professionals in the work place. Project HealthDesign, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, supported 14 teams from around the country to develop innovative consumer-facing technology solutions ("apps", devices, data integration strategies, etc). What emerged was the unique ways patients name and label health challenges and health behaviors and the importance of incorporating into design of consumer-facing HIT solutions understanding WHERE health activities occur. We developed the Living Environments Laboratory at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, and created a virtual reality CAVE that allows us to re-create every home environment on earth. The CAVE, originally built to accelerate the design of home care technologies, now serves as a site for a wide range of scholarly activities, from art installations to visualization of molecules to exploration of vision and perceptions.