News & Events / BME Seminar Series / Past Seminar Speakers / 2017-18Tania Douglas, PhD
BME Seminar Series Fall 2017
Thursday, November 30, 2017 at 4-5 pm
Tech L361
Host: Professor Matthew Glucksberg
Visiting Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University
Health technology innovation in Africa
Innovation is a broad concept and is not limited to technology. In addition, technology is not neutral in that its impact depends very much on its context of use. This is particularly true for health-related technology in developing settings, given large disparities in health status and in access to health care. There is therefore room both for health innovation broadly, ie beyond technological innovation, as a focus of academic activity, and for biomedical engineering programmes to pay attention to the societal context of technological innovation.
An overview will be presented of a recently introduced graduate programme in health innovation at the University of Cape Town, with a focus on its core component, a course grounded in design thinking, which is also open to graduate students in biomedical engineering. The programme and the course are aimed at exposing students to the realities of the social context in South Africa as well as to the way in which context impacts on innovation, both technological and otherwise. Consideration will be given to the interplay between the social focus of the health innovation programme and the technological focus of the biomedical engineering programme.
Learn more about Professor Tania Douglas and their research here.