photo collage by Alberto Mena

IDEA 2009 Medical & Scientific Winners

Winners in the medical and scientific category of this year's International Design Excellence Awards included serious, high-tech equipment alongside products designed for personal pleasure. (Also included here: the Project Masiluleke Home HIV Test Kit, which took a gold award in the packaging and graphics category.) Two medical gold winners took complex processes and systems and made them elegant and efficient. "The designers demonstrated a unique understanding of the users of these systems and how to make these products as easy to use and error-proof as possible," said judge Ken Musgrave, director of industrial design at Dell, of the gold-winning atherectomy system from Pathway Medical.