More-than-human health for the responsible innovation of wearable medical devices

The more-than-human is an emerging perspective that enlarges the focus beyond the human subject, to consider the connections between the human beings and other entities in the material world and in the natural environment. When this perspective is adopted in the design of wearable medical devices, it increases the complexity of the elements to consider and this requires the definition of a new unit of analysis beyond the patient-device interaction. To guide the design practice in this domain, we propose to focus the analysis on three levels: the human, the socio-cultural context and the natural environment. Through the discussion of a case study for the responsible innovation of compression therapy in treating venous disease, we propose some key lenses to guide the future design of medical wearable design for a more-than-human health.