Monash University Associate Professor Leah Hiss It has been named the winner of the 2022 Australian Women in Design Award Good design Awards for her work on wearable health technologies and healthcare co-design, most recently with the World Health Organization.
The award recognizes women at the top of their fields. Shockingly, women hold less than 17% of executive leadership roles in the design and creative industries.
The Good Design Awards have been around for over 60 years and celebrate innovative products and services that excel in architecture, engineering, fashion, digital and communication design, as well as recognizing new and emerging design fields including design strategy, social impact design. , design research and upcoming design talent.
Assoc Professor Hayes said she was honored to receive the award, which seeks to address the gender imbalance in the design industry.
“I’m excited to bring my design skills to the big challenges we face as citizens, especially around equity and access to good health care,” she said.
“Design can give people power and agency, voice and choice in how products and systems are created, how they look and feel and how they work.”
Assoc Professor Hayes is working on the Future Hospital Future Health initiative to redesign the healthcare experience in Australia.
She is working with WHO to improve the implementation and application of WHO guidelines, particularly in developing countries. Its wearable health technologies include jewelry-like hearing aids, insulin-administering jewelry, heart-rate monitoring jewelry, wearable devices for disease detection, and emergency jewelry during medical crises.
Her design work has won six Australian Good Design Awards, including the 2018 Good Design of the Year Award, and can be found in the museum heritage collections of Victoria and Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum.
In her role as Monash University’s Eva and Marc Bessen International Research Chair in Design, Hayes will strengthen design capabilities across multidisciplinary projects at the university nationally and internationally.
Professor Shane Murray, Monash’s Dean of Art, Design and Architecture, said the award was fantastic recognition of Hayes’ leadership.
“Lea’s work exemplifies our faculty’s vision to respond to major challenges facing the world today by leading major projects that connect industry and technology through design research,” he said.
“Her experience and work in developing innovative health design solutions across devices, services and experiences will further our impact by design.”
Also among the winners was home independence support staff platform Mable, which won the digital design category for Mable’s last-minute innovation that helped quickly find short notice support.
Australian medtech startup AdvanceCell Isotopes’ revolutionary cancer treatment, AdvanceCell Isotopes 212 Pb Generator, the world’s first alpha isotope bench-scale generator, has unveiled the high-side, named 2022 Australian Good Design Award.
