Connecting creative health, neuroscience, design, artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, the cluster explores new approaches to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, wellbeing and healthy longevity. We understand care not simply as a clinical service or technological intervention, but as a living, adaptive ecology of relationships between bodies, minds, technologies, environments and communities. Through interdisciplinary research, creative experimentation and co-design, we aim to develop innovative, equitable and human-centred approaches to health, spanning creative therapies, digital health interventions and responsive systems of care.
Reimagining the futures of health and care
As populations age, health needs evolve and pressures on healthcare systems intensify, we need new approaches that connect prevention, treatment, recovery and healthy longevity with the social, emotional and creative dimensions of human experience.
The Creative Health, Care and Technology cluster creates a space where creative practice, scientific discovery and technological innovation can inform and transform one another. We explore how music, movement, visual arts, craft and participatory design can intersect with neuroscience, neurotechnology, wearable sensing, artificial intelligence and digital health to develop new therapeutic experiences, personalised interventions and more responsive models of care.
Our work is grounded in the understanding that health is shaped not only by biological processes, but also by identity, relationships, culture and the environments we inhabit. We are particularly interested in how creative and technological approaches can support brain and mental health, physical health, rehabilitation and healthy ageing, while enabling people to participate actively in their own care.
This includes exploring how emerging technologies can sense, interpret and respond to changing physiological, cognitive and emotional needs, and how creative practices can contribute to therapeutic innovation, recovery, social connection and quality of life. Questions of ethics, accessibility, data governance, agency and inclusion are integral to this work.
Building on the interdisciplinary symposium Designing for Ecologies of Care, hosted at Edinburgh Futures Institute in August 2025, the cluster fosters collaboration through research conversations, creative workshops, hands-on prototyping, policy engagement and partnerships with healthcare organisations, communities and industry.
Our ambition is to move beyond disciplinary boundaries to co-create ethical, accessible and sustainable approaches to health and care across the lifespan—recognising creativity as a vital form of knowledge and intervention, and technology as a means of extending human capability, connection and care.
“What if we reimagined health and care as a living ecology that evolves with us throughout our lives? By bringing creativity, human experience and emerging technologies together, we can transform how we prevent and treat illness, support recovery and enable healthier, longer lives—while keeping people and their relationships at the heart of care.”
Lynne Craig, Professor Sarah Kettley and Dr Shama Rahman, Creative Health, Care and Technology Cluster leads
Meet our researchers
Core
Internal
External
- Line Rumhult, PhD Student, Lab for Social Design, Design School, Kolding
- Sara Nabil, Associate Professor (Reader) Queens University, Canada
- Antonia Hurtado, Service Design Graduate, Independent Service Designer, Edinburgh Futures Institute/University of Edinburgh Alumna
- Ursula Ankeny, Design Research Fellow, Lab4Living, Sheffield Hallam University
- Rachel Brown, Product Design Graduate, Independent Designer, University of Edinburgh Alumna
- Ann Light, Professor Emerita, University of Sussex
- Chenxi Cui, Guest Researcher, AIR Lab, ITU; Coordinator, Co-Founder & Co-Convenor, DRS Design Philosophy Studio; Co-Convenor, DRS Queer(ing) Design Studio AIR Lab (Affective Interactions & Relations), HCI & Design Section, IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Cláudia de Souza Libânio, Associate Professor, Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA)
- Desiree Riny, PhD Candidate / Phd Teaching Fellow, Monash University
- Sara Goldchmit, Associate Professor; Vice-Coordinator of the Graduate Programme in Design; Coordinator of the Design for Health Research Laboratory Faculty of Architecture, Urbanism and Design, University of São Paulo (FAU-USP), Brazil
- Theo Hughes Riley, Associate Professor in Electronic Textiles, Nottingham Trent University
