National College of Art and Design awards Honorary Doctorate to internationally recognised leader in healthcare innovation Lorna Ross
The National College of Art and Design has today (Friday, 29 November) conferred their Honorary Doctorate award on Lorna Ross for her commitment to design-led innovation in healthcare.
The recipient of NCAD’s second Honorary Doctorate joined 320 graduates being conferred at University College Dublin as part of the 2024 Autumn Conferring.
Lorna Ross is an internationally recognised leader in the area of healthcare innovation. Her career spans 30+ years of professional experience leading strategic design activity across a range of industry sectors from healthcare to government services. Her work at The Mayo Clinic established the first and largest activity of design-led innovation in an academic medical institution and became recognised internationally as the benchmark in patient-centric healthcare transformation.
Nationally, Lorna sat on the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment’s Expert Group on Future Skills Needs and The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform Design In Government; Design Our Public Services. She was a member of the expert committee charged with developing a report and recommendations from the Creating Our Future citizen engagement initiative in 2021.
In 2018, while at Accenture's Global Innovation Centre, The Dock, she founded the Human Insights Lab, in partnership with Trinity College School of Humanities, exploring the ethical and philosophical implications of disruptive, emerging technologies. As part of her role on the RTE / Science Foundation Ireland documentary, Big Life Fix, Lorna became a nationally recognised spokesperson for Irish Design in innovation and an advocate for design acting at a human scale, on social issues.
As Innovation leader for VHI Healthcare, Lorna led the strategies for Women’s Health, Digital Health and Care Ecosystem Integration. She sits on the Research and Innovation Board of Tallaght University Hospital and holds an adjunct faculty position with the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland.
In October 2024, she assumed the role of Head of Department, Design and Creative Media at ATU Donegal. Her focus at ATU will be to enrich the creative economy in the North West region, including cross-border collaboration.
Addressing the event, Professor Sarah Glennie, Director of NCAD, said:
“The National College of Art and Design is delighted to award an Honorary Doctorate to Lorna Ross. Bestowing NCAD’s highest award is an occasion that adds greatly to the calibre and talents of those we are privileged to count among our broader and worldwide NCAD community.
“In conferring Lorna today as an Honorary Doctor of Art and Design at NCAD, we acknowledge Lorna's internationally acclaimed and wide-ranging work as a designer since she first graduated in Fashion Design from NCAD over 30 years ago. NCAD recognises the extraordinary contribution Lorna has made to the field of design for health. Lorna has designed experiences, products and services to improve health outcomes and promote wellbeing and this is a vision shared by NCAD’s Design for Health Lab and the wider institution, and one which we believe will inspire our students graduating today and all the NCAD community.”
"Less Really is More - Design in an Age of Degrowth" - Doctoral Talk and Panel Discussion, Thursday, 28th November.
Lorna Ross spoke to invited guests, students and staff of NCAD about her creative career, and addressed the need for design to change as we enter an age of de-growth. Lorna was joined on stage by Charlotte Barker, CEO of the Institute of Designers in Ireland; Dr Ruth Freeman, Director of Science for Society Research Ireland; Josina Vink, a designer and researcher with expertise in health system transformation and Professor Alex Milton, Head of the School of Design at NCAD.
ENDS
