Location

E14-633

Description

The nature of healthcare is changing. It has to, given oft-cited population growth, staggering costs, and damaging inefficiencies. When personalized medicine, buttressed by new technology, becomes the norm, what are we realistically expected to do with increased individual responsibility, choice, and more readily available information? People tend to make unhealthy and irrational decisions. Preventative medicine is available right now in terms of the activities we do, the decisions we make, and even the things we care about. It doesn’t change the fact that we lack the structure to integrate healthcare into our daily lives in any way that is either empowering or rewarding.

In contrast, as a culture, we’re at our best when we’re being creative. We have the capacity to lead creative lives. Part of that capacity lies in how something like music can touch on just about every aspect of human thinking and experience. If music is such a pervasive phenomenon, if its something we’re invested in as a society, it is the perfect transport for embedding healthcare into our daily lives. This dissertation demonstrates the ability to embed significant healthcare practice into creative experiences in everyday environments. The critical problems of scale, access, assessment, and specificity are explored, culminating in the design of a medical device for use in home-based, chronic care, rehabilitation environments. The rehabilitation experience is inseparable from an instrument learning and performance environment. At the conclusion of this research, it is possible to substantiate an area where users are empowered during scientifically based creative tasks to compose their own neurological change.

Host/Chair: Tod Machover

Participant(s)/Committee

Hugh Herr, Gottfried Schlaug, MD