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The UK's "Design for Patient Dignity" BedPod concept

By Rain Noe - March 24, 2010

in Object Culture

The UK's Design Council, a government-funded national strategic body for design dedicated to "helping businesses become more successful, public services more efficient and designers more effective" has teamed up with the UK's Department of Health to produce a "Design for Patient Dignity" program aimed at hospitals:

Design for Patient Dignity is an initiative between the Department for Health and the Design Council that brings together designers, manufacturers, healthcare experts, staff and patients to design a variety of solutions to enhance and promote privacy and dignity in hospitals.

Health Minister Ann Keen recently took the wraps off of some of the concepts, like a hybrid wheelchair/bed, a "more dignified" and warmer hospital gown and an easily retrofittable capsule bathroom. At press time images were unfortunately scarce, though the UK's Building website managed to snag a video showing how this cool prefabricated modular bed system (designed in a collaboration between Nightingale Associates, SAS International and Billings Jackson Design) all goes together on-site:

The next step for the concepts is the evaluation and feedback stages, and then they will hopefully come closer to production. Hit the Design Council link above to see a complete list of projects.