Jonathan West
Jonathan West has a background in design and engineering, with a first degree in Mechanical Engineering at Birmingham University, and a Masters in Industrial Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art in 2003. He has since designed a powered paediatric wheelchair for Sunrise Medical, meeting user needs and designing a working prototype.
As a design researcher in the centre, Jonathan provided GlaxoSmithKline with design guidance on its pharmaceutical packs - directly influencing the company's European pack style. His work on a new resuscitation trolley for the National Patient Safety Agency won two Medical Futures Innovation Awards and is currently in clinical trials prior to manufacture. It was part of the four-month Ergonomics: Real Design exhibition at London's Design Museum.
Jonathan's research interests include design for patient safety and inclusive design. He has helped the Centre's Health & Patient Safety research lab to grow by shaping high profile projects such as Design Bugs Out and Design for Patient Dignity with the Department of Health and Design Council, as well as a project to redesign the Cervical Collar with Bath Institute of Medical Engineering.
He is Senior Associate on the EPSRC-funded project Designing Out Medical Error. This three-year multidisciplinary project in collaboration with Imperial College, London, looks at the role design can play in reducing medical error on hospital wards. This award-winning project pioneers methods of collaboration and has resulted in a suite of designs for the hospital ward. These have been exhibited at the RCA and will be exhibited at the Royal College of Surgeons and at the Pontio Centre in 2012. Clinical trials of the designs are under way and one design, the CareCentre, is manufactured and on sale.
At the centre, Jonathan has chaired a session at the Include 2007 conference, and has run workshops on design for patient safety at Include 2009 and Include 2011. He has facilitated at the Forum on the Future of Surgery, the 2009 Methods Lab and has contributed to the Centre's web tool www.designingwithpeople.org .
Jonathan has disseminated his work nationally and internationally, presenting at various conferences and contributing to books, journals and papers.
