This platform aims to distribute open and inclusive healthcare to citizens based on digital fabrication and is the outcome of Made4you, a Horizon 2020 funded project developed by different partners.
Made4You identified how existing healthcare systems have not yet been able to cover some areas of need, offering mainly standardise products or services, too expensive or not easy to adapt to someone’s necessity.
Often patients use care solutions that do not fit their needs in terms of use, cost or aesthetics.

As it happens, when people can’t find what they are looking for on the market, they tend to look for solutions elsewhere (online), and they choose also to go for the self made option, which can significantly and rapidly improve the quality of their life.
The project tries to work and bring solutions to a system which is very often too complex.
If you're interested in discovering our findings and outcomes, check out our deliverables

Our objectives are therefore to:

• Build a collaborative ecosystem of citizens with disabilities, healthcare professionals and makers;
• Provide access to open source and digital fabrication tools;
• Foster the ecosystem through open exchange of knowledge;
• Build guidelines that allow anyone to replicate formats everywhere.

The innovative power of users and care professionals, combined with Fab Labs and open hardware is not being used to its full potential yet, and we want to change that.

Key to co-design is that people become creators, not only users of innovation. In our case, patients, their families, healthcare professionals and designers are involved in the co-design process as experts in their specific environments, together with makers, who are experts in the use of digital tools, such as 3D printers, laser cutters, etc.
According to someone’s need, technology can be implemented accordingly to what is needed to achieve the best solution, and digital fabrication offers a wide scope for action.
The careables.org platform is becoming the central hub for DIY healthcare, an open repository for well documented open hardware projects and offers communities a place to connect and exchange knowledge, needs and co-create solutions.

Careables is committed to responsible making and has defined a set of core principles:

1. Make things that make sense: Create solutions that answer to real personal problems or needs.
2. Co-design with others: Make space for diverse skills, competences, knowledge, and experiences to merge and come to new and meaningful solutions.
3. Empower people: Teach others so that everyone can become more technologically literate and see the potentials.
4. Share How You Make: Openly document the making of the project enabling its replication and choose the most appropriate licenses for your project.
5. Be aware of limits: Consider any gaps of knowledge when you design for health and care, ask the people you design for and clinicians for support and feedback and follow quality and safety standards.

Over the years a large movement advocating that everyone can be a “maker of health” - from healthcare professionals to people with disabilities and their caregivers - has been growing, facilitated by several factors: digital fabrication and fablabs or makerspaces dealing with health and care, people that are self-managing their own needs or volunteering their time for designing new solutions, online environments for open source projects.
We have been collaborating with organisations, projects and individuals worldwide, sharing values and objectives and this ongoing map collects them all.

Do you believe in what Careables does and what it stands for? Are you interested to take this forward in your Space and/or Organization?
Careables is committed to building an open and inclusive healthcare system to citizens around the world, based on digital fabrication. We aim to do that through bringing together different stakeholder groups; Healthcare professional, users( patients), Designers and Makers.

How can you join the Careables Community?

• Download Careables Toolkit to use in your space
• Sign Up for our Newsletter
• Interact with us on Social Media channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin and Youtube
• Add your Careables device on Welder.app and share on social media with the hashtag #Careables
• Follow our website for:
  • Events from the open source healthcare and maker community.
  • Stories from active community members.
  • News of latest researches and similar initiatives.

What Careables Offers?

• Careables distinguished Visual identity for Local Chapters (i.e. Careables Cairo)
• Partners Visual Identity to be integrated
  • Integration in press materials (e.g. press releases, PressKit, guest articles, interviews)
  • (Logo) integration in print documents (e.g.in Flyers, Stickers, Posters)
  • Online integration (e.g. on the website, in newsletters, on social media
  • Integration on Site (e.g. Press Conferences, Events)
• Listing your Space in Careables Community Map.
• Access to Careables toolkits and Event Formats
  • Careables training kit
  • Design and 3D technologies for Healthcare
  • Healthcare Co-design toolkit
  • PPE Playbook for making
  • How to create an Online Maker Gathering
  • Host your own Careables Moving exhibition
  • How to document your project on Welder
• Download Careables Principles and ShowCase Posters
• Submit your Stories and News to be published on the Website and Newsletter
• Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and know latest updates from our Global Community
• Hosting one of Careables Events at your spaces or spaces of our partners. Our Event formats include: Co-Design-Sprint, Hackathons, and Training for Students and medical professionals, Exhibitions and Maker Gathering.

The Careables team consists of experienced partners with extensive networks in the relevant fields.

Checkout the contacts page for any support or enquiry.