History of Health Design

Early humans didn't know much about how our bodies worked. We had to come up with clever ways to treat illnesses and injuries, often with rituals and herbal remedies.

Over the past 10,000 years, we've gone on a tear. As we've learned more about science, the world around us, and our own minds, we've invented tools, machines, and techniques that help us stay healthy and fix things that go wrong inside and out of our bodies. Soon enough, we'll be dictating how long we want to live.

Here's our evolving list of top healthcare innovations over time, from the stone surgical knife to genetic “scissors.”

Let us know what we're missing at feedback@goinvo.com.

Authors

Samantha Wuu, GoInvo

Sam is a writer, editor, and resident People Person at GoInvo. She previously worked at NYC Health + Hospitals on the migration of the provider credentialing process to a digital platform. A middle school English teacher in a past life, Sam is also a lifelong detail enthusiast and fan of diversity (of both people and punctuation). She joined Invo in 2022 with a BA in English from Barnard College and an MEd from Harvard University.

Juhan Sonin, GoInvo

Juhan Sonin leads GoInvo with expertise in healthcare design and system engineering. He’s spent time at Apple, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), and MITRE. His work has been recognized by the New York Times, BBC, and National Public Radio (NPR) and published in The Journal of Participatory Medicine and The Lancet. He currently lectures on design and engineering at MIT.

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