DKMD: Donna Karan Goes (Alternatively) Medical

Not content with designing "tops, sweaters, jeans, pants, dresses, skirts & jackets ... for the person who never knows where the day is going to take them," fashion icon Donna Karan is taking on mainstream medical care.

"I cannot wait to redesign hospital gowns," she said, talking about the mortifying, backless, paper-thin robes. "We're intimidated. Now is that good for our disease? No. So there has to be a better way."

Karan's project originated in the saga of her husband, who died in 2001 after a six-year battle with lung cancer.

"The surgeons were brilliant and the chemotherapy, the radiation,"
Karan said. "But it became very, very apparent to me that there was more to his care than just what was being offered at a hospital level."
[...]

Karan's dream is for every hospital to have a place where patients can go to get nutritious meals, yoga lessons and alternative therapies -- in addition to traditional medicine.

"Could you imagine if there was someone who would take that patient out…after it's diagnosed, and take them on their journey and be able to embrace all aspects of the possibilities of what they can have? But not only the patient, but their loved ones as well," she said.

"Offer sort of the menu of what's offered to them," she continued. "And then while the patient is in the hospital, physically, emotionally give the patient the tools that's needed to really help them heal themselves. That in itself will help so much."

A laudable goal, and a service that could help many people, though it's important that alternative therapies by a hospital be subject to the same clinical testing that drugs and devices already receive.

It'd also be interesting to see what would happen if she teamed up with Andy Grove....

Fashion Icon Takes On Medicine [ABC Medicine]

Intel's Andy Grove Pitches a Plan for Fixing Health Care [Wired]