Improving the Health of People with Collective System Design
Abstract
With the growing number of obese and diabetic individuals, there lies great importance in finding novel ways to reverse the epidemic of diabetes. There are numerous factors that contribute to the health crisis that the world is experiencing. Due to the prevalence of diabetes, optimizing solutions to address only certain aspects of the epidemic will only provide marginal benefits to society. With a systems-level viewpoint, the true pitfalls and areas of improvement can be better recognized. The current global health crisis is due to three major systemic issues: (i) a food supply chain that results in an overfed but undernourished society; (ii) a medical establishment that mitigates symptoms instead of root causes; and (iii) a widespread research base that is plagued with conflicting information [1]. Together these problems represent system design failures of the current food and medical establishments. This thesis argues that designing systems to meet customer needs will in fact improve the health of people. Therefore, this thesis explores the possibility of using the Collective System Design Methodology to understand and design health care systems that meet customer needs. There are three main objectives of this thesis: (1) an explanation of the current failures of the food and farming systems and the health care field from a systems-level perspective, (2) a case study of an existing system that improves the health of people by meeting customer needs, and (3) the development of a Collective System Design Map for meeting the needs of obese and type-II diabetic patients to reverse diabetes. By applying Collective System Design to the prevention and reversal of type-2 diabetes, this thesis provides a new approach for chronic disease reversal and care.
Degree
M.Sc.
Advisors
Cochran, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Design|Language|Agriculture|Food Science|Industrial engineering|Medicine|Pharmaceutical sciences|Public health|Recreation
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