2024 Galleries
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Galleries // 2012 Spark:Product // Fight Malnutrition
Fight Malnutrition
Winner - Silver
Competition: Spark:Product
Designer: Philips Design Innovation team
Design Type: preventing malnutrition
Website: http://www.philips.com/design
Malnutrition is considered one of the key challenges for the health of children across the world. The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 150 million children under 5 years in developing countries (26.7%) are malnourished. An additional 200 million children have stunted height. Malnutrition is not a disease, but it is the most important risk factor for disease worldwide. In order to develop relevant, context-specific design solutions for monitoring malnutrition the Philips Design team had to generate a deep understanding of the issues. Working closely with the specialist NGOs (Save the Children / Real Medicine Foundation), critical issues were explored and initial concepts developed in a kick-off workshop. The project focused on children under the age of 5, as this is the key point at which poor nutrition must be tackled in order to prevent the long-term damage to the child’s health and future development. Concepts developed have been grouped together in two ‘toolkits’ for social empowerment. One toolkit is for non-professional healthcare workers, to empower them to detect and measure malnutrition, the other is for families, to help them address key aspects of monitoring and education about malnutrition. The emerging concepts were ideated in relation to easy-to-use measurement tools, growth charts and monitoring malnutrition at home. Selected concepts (Trunky and Monkey) will be tested in the field in 2012 by the NGOs.
