Laila Steen is the first to admit that having an arts student pursue a science degree seems pretty weird. In her fourth year at the U of A, the international student from Norway developed a way to create 3-D printable moulds for ear prosthetics during a practicum at the Misericordia Hospital in Edmonton for her bachelor of industrial design degree. Shortly after, she applied to the master of science in Rehabilitation Science program at the U of A. It might seem like a stretch for a design student to be delving into medicine, but Steen says arts and sciences have a lot more in common than you might think.
Did you have an interest in medical design before your practicum?
I saw myself more in something like product design or furniture design, but then I heard about the Institute for Reconstructive Sciences in Medicine and its practicum. At the IRSM, they focus mostly on medical reconstructive devices for people who have had head and neck injuries due to cancer, trauma or birth defects. They have a research lab that focuses mainly on creating new and more effective ways to produce these devices, which is where I worked.
So, with the 3-D printable moulds, you made creating the prosthetics more efficient?
Yes. Facial prosthetics are usually made from silicone using dental plaster moulds, and then they're coloured and painted to make them look real. So our goal was to make a digital version of this process. The nice thing is that I was able to apply the design process that I use for design and furniture to this, as well.
How do design and medicine align?
What excites you most about design?
As a designer, it feels like an intuitive thing to see problems and then try to solve them or find a solution. We're trained to look beyond the solution and try to prove things long term. We don't just reconfigure things - we redesign them. The most exciting and rewarding thing is seeing how it can have an impact on people's lives.
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