Jan Carel Diehl: “We need healthcare, while at the same time it’s important that we take care of our environment.”

Medical Delta professor Prof. Dr. Ir. Jan Carel Diehl (TU Delft) gave his inaugural lecture last Friday. He combines solutions for healthcare with care for our planet. His many projects make an impact from Rotterdam to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Jan Carel Diehl, in addition to being a Medical Delta professor, is also one of the program leaders of the Medical Delta Program ‘Sustainable Hospitals – from Science to Practice’. This interview originally appeared on the website of Industrial Design at TU Delft (text: Bregt Timmerman).
You were born in the same year as the founding of the Faculty of Industrial Design. Why did you choose design studies?
In high school, I was good at physics. So, at home, my future seemed set – I was going to study electrical engineering in Twente. But I had more interests. Sketching, drawing models in the academy class. And I was a volunteer at the school theater. So, it was a combination of creativity and technology, and I found that in Industrial Design at Delft. At first, I couldn’t explain very well at home that I was going to study ‘industrial design,’ but for me, it was an instant hit. Here, you can work with your imagination, create stories, and put them into practice.
You have a special interest in healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa. Where does that come from?
In the Netherlands, there are many researchers and designers working on relatively small problems. In Sub-Saharan Africa, you find far fewer of them, while the challenges and opportunities are immense.
We actually don’t know that much about how people live in these areas. What is their healthcare path? What can be produced locally? As a designer, you get a lot of space to map out problems and then develop interventions to improve the situation.
Before, I worked on a number of other societal challenges until I really landed in healthcare. Things like solar energy, sanitation in slums, and clean cooking. Many people cook with biomass, exposing themselves to dirty smoke. How can you prevent this?
I started to realize that there are many great things we can do in healthcare in that region. Moreover, I can count on a real ecosystem around health at TU Delft. For instance, the TU Delft Global Initiative, which brings together and supports researchers who want to work in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a designer, I can also offer something—some of the beautiful tech developed at the university sometimes struggles to find its way to society. A designer can facilitate this.
In your inaugural speech, you often talked about collaboration with stakeholders. What makes a designer so good at networking?
Actually, I’m not naturally a networker. My volunteer work at the school theater was always behind the scenes. Even saying a single line on stage didn’t go very well. But I learned by doing. For example, after my studies, I helped build a startup in the U.S. around social sustainability. One day, I was asked to give a presentation to a group of people from the United Nations. I had no experience with networking, but that didn’t matter. The good thing is that people come to you when you’ve been on stage. So the first contact is easily made.
The field you navigate is incredibly broad and complex. How do you maintain an overview?
What I do can sometimes seem chaotic because I’m involved in many different things. Is there a connection between them? It might not seem like it, but there is. With each new step in my career, my perspective has become a little clearer. To the point where I can even explain my principle of ‘systemic design’ to my son’s classmates. As humans, we face several challenges. We need healthcare, while we also need to take care of our environment. To combine the two, we first need to look at the big picture. How do people see things? How do they interact with each other? Based on that, you develop products and services that provide concrete solutions to some of these questions.
Where do you see the greatest impact of your work?
This month, I had the opportunity to speak to 400 design students at an introductory lecture. At least fifteen of them may do ‘something’ with sustainability in healthcare. Will they change the world? I think my greatest impact lies in inspiring people. And that can be through big or small projects.
Many people are pessimistic about what’s happening to the world. So, I think it’s important to show them that designing solutions is not only important but also fun. I want to help them get started, give them energy. So they tackle things and keep going. That’s another strength of designers. A positive approach, not just debating but sitting together to see how we can address things, and having fun while doing it. Because, in fact, TU Delft is a big playground.
What would be a great result of your research and work for you?
Whether you want to solve social or environmental challenges. Whether you live in Rotterdam or Africa. You encounter similar problems everywhere. There’s so much to be done. And we’ve already achieved some great things. I mentioned a few in my speech: INSPIRED, CHLOE, ESCH-R, VELA. I’ve now worked in sixty southern countries, and in recent years that has included the Netherlands and my own city, Rotterdam. I’m especially proud to contribute to so many wonderful projects and collaborate with so many talented people.
Read the full interview in Dutch here.
Source: Medical Delta