Your Own Health?

Is our health entirely our own?

We are encouraged to make healthy choices, monitor our bodies, manage chronic conditions and take control of our wellbeing. Yet our health is never entirely our own. Family members, healthcare professionals, technologies, communities and public systems all influence our ability to live healthy lives. “Gezondheid van Jezelf?” (“Your Own Health?”) explores the emerging concept of health ownership: our realistic (in)ability to momentary influence our own health and the health of others.

In our project, the concept of ‘health ownership’ is questioned and approached from a transdisciplinary perspective and involves a consortium involving multiple scientific disciplines (design, psychology, sociology, philosophy, medical sciences), applied sciences (design, care), care providers and care/tech- developers.

What can you expect to experience?

In our exhibited demonstrators, visitors can experience the daily reality of living with Type 1 diabetes through the eyes of a patient’s social environment and reflect on the relationship between humans and implant technology. Other projects support conversations between parents and children about social media use, open the conversation about financial resilience, wellbeing and self-efficacy and invite visitors to experience a future in which professional healthcare is no longer available. You can experience a total of seven of our demonstrators; in addition, naturally you can learn more about the definitions and implications of health ownership.

Rather than providing answers, the exhibition invites visitors to engage with a fundamental question for the future of healthcare: if health ownership is shared, how do we decide who takes responsibility on your and other’s health, when, and for whom?