PLS at Dutch Design Week

PLS at Dutch Design Week

In October The PLS consortium participated in the Dutch Design week: the largest events in the Netherlands about technology, innovation and design.

Key objective of participating in the Dutch Design Week, was to receive input on the concept of an incubator 2.0, as it is a completely new, disruptive and quiet unknown concept. It was a great moment to talk about our research with about 200 people and get insight in how Dutch society currently feels about the project. About 3000 people visited the stand. We do have to note that people visiting the Dutch Design Week (visitors were between 20-65 years old), are often tech and innovation minded people.

The event lasted for 7 days: from 22-30th of October 2021. The stand was staffed by couples of two researchers/obstetricians from Eindhoven ( both PLS researchers, as interested obstetricians) so we could inform interested people passing by and ask them some triggering questions to make people really think about the concept, and what they might do, if the choice would already be available. 

3D printed prototype

A first visual 3D printed concept prototype was created, to be able to make it easier to explain what our research is about and how it might look, making the link with the common concept of a clinical incubator currently used.

Main finding from joining the event was a general positive tendency towards the research. When explaining the size of the problem (at the moment 50% does not survive) and the lack of development in the past decade, most of the visitors were open to the solution of a chamber in chamber “water incubator 2.0” 
More critical questions were raised about the need for the solution as we already have many lives on our planet. Some visitors of the stand argued there might be more urgent challenges to work on, besides rescuing extremely preterm.  

Concluding, the event and prototype led to interesting conversations and a general view of how this public feels about the research. We are very happy to have joined and would recommend to join more of these types of events in the future. We want to thank all people that participated and helped to make it a success!