NUH, LASALLE launch sustainable medicine design lab

The lab brings together clinicians, designers, and students to develop practical design interventions.

National University Hospital (NUH) and LASALLE College of the Arts have launched the Sustainable Medicine Design Lab to develop design-led solutions for more sustainable healthcare systems.

The lab will bring together clinicians, designers, and students, and was developed by LASALLE’s BA (Hons) Design for Social Futures programme in partnership with NUH’s Department of Ophthalmology and the NUHS Office of Sustainability.

The inaugural lab produced six final-year student projects after a year of immersive research, fieldwork, and ethnography with healthcare stakeholders. Several of the projects are already under review for real-world implementation.

The projects include a redesigned cataract operating theatre, a reworked surgical procedure tray, interventions to reduce pharmaceutical waste, a toolkit to improve clinic environments, design-led tools to improve patient eye health literacy, and recommendations to address gaps in healthcare sustainability initiatives.

NUH said the collaboration brings design thinking directly into clinical settings, helping examine workflows and environments in ways that can improve efficiency, reduce waste, and enhance patient care.

LASALLE said the project shows how design can contribute to complex systems outside traditional design sectors, including healthcare.

The programme starts with a three-month internship, followed by nine months of fieldwork. Students observed medical procedures and conducted co-design sessions with patients, caregivers, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, cleaners, logistics teams, and other operations staff.