(Former) General Manager, Global Design & User Experience, GE Healthcare
Bob Schwartz, FIDSA, leads six studios in five countries and a team of 60 at GE Healthcare’s Global Design & User Experience. He’s held similar positions at Procter & Gamble and Motorola. He served for ten years as IDSA’s executive director. Schwartz is a member of the Executive Board of Trustees of the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and vice chairman of the Board of Directors at the Design Management Institute. Schwartz was inducted into the IDSA Academy of Fellows for his contributions to the profession and in 2016 was named in IDSA's INNOVATION magazine as one of the 50 Notable Members of IDSA during the last 50 years. He’s also represented the United Nations as a senior technical advisor for design to the People’s Republic of China. Schwartz has a master’s degree in industrial design from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he was a Roddy Scholar. He also earned a BFA in industrial and graphic design from the Kansas City Art Institute.
“We’re Here for the Humans!”
Robert Schwartz, FIDSA, shares how GE Healthcare’s Global Design and User Experience Team is able to get things done in a complex global business environment by making it about everybody else, being subversive with goodness in our hearts, recruiting the army we don’t control—and always putting patients and their families at the center of our work.
IDSA Medical Conference 2018 chair Bryce Rutter discusses speaker Bob Scwartz.
“Award Winning” Healthcare Design
Many industry awards recognize products that declare benefits to users, society and the entity which brought them to market. This panel will take up the question of what impact awards and award winners have. The influence of awards in healthcare design as well as selection criteria will be explored.
Moderators: Bill Evans, IDSA, Bridge Design and Ximedica & Aenor Sawyer, MD, MS, UCSF, University of California, San Francisco
Panelists: DJ O’Neil, Hub Strategy and Robert Schwartz, FIDSA, GE Healthcare
Keynote: The Future Is… in Health Care
Panel Discussion | Medical Design Development Opinions from Leading Design Consultancies & Corporations
Panelist
There are many valid reasons industrial design is involved in medical design development. While its contribution to medical devices is recognized by various awards, there are still challenges faced by ID.
For example, how do we justify ID contributions in the light of design control? Or defend our position amongst core scientists? How do we know when it is appropriate to hire an ID firm and how are we sure it’s the correct one to meet our needs?
This enlightening panel discussion will tackle these questions and provide insights into key issues faced by ID in the development of medical design, while inviting audience participation.
Executive Director
Bob Schwartz’s service to IDSA began on the local level in 1982, culminating in a 10-year tenure as the Society’s executive director from 1988-1998. While at the helm, he made IDSA the “voice” of industrial design in the United States, increasing membership by 30 percent and revenues by 300 percent.
