Today and yesterday we made the 9 hour trip to visit Yen Minh, a referral hospital nestled in the mountains of northern vietnam that is much more similar in terms of treatment capabilities and resources to the district hospitals we have had in mind while designing Otter than previous user visits the Global Health ADE team has been able to conduct. This entailed plenty of gorgeous scenery and valiant battles with car sickness on the twisty switchback roads, but we managed to make it in one piece!
Caption: Gorgeous scenery nearing sunset while driving amongst the mountains of northern Vietnam.
Upon arrival, we were able to meet the Director of the hospital and offer our thanks, before touring the NICU and the Labor and Delivery wards with the Director of the NICU (Thi Minh Nguyen) and several other doctors from those wards. We saw some great examples of how the equipment they had was being used, such as positioning aides, the temperature probes on the incubators being plugged in but not attached to the babies, and a repeat of Firefly having a hospital gown draped over it because it was directly below the AC unit.
Caption: A patient at Yen Minh hospital napping in the incubator, with temperature probe plugged in… and coiled up to the side. Broken, perhaps?
Unbeknownst to us, our interview was to be with what seemed like the entire department of the neonatal ward! While a little intimidating at first, this meant we got some really valuable feedback from a whole group of folks and captured a number of useful back and forth conversations between the doctors-- thanks to our amazing and persevering translator Hoa Dang Thanh and MTTS liaison, Engineering Fellow Chloe Nguyen.
Caption: 11 people giving us great feedback on the interface of Otter… simultaneously.
It ended up being a very fruitful first visit (by either ADE or DtM!) with lots of great insights and answers for some of our persistent questions. Excitingly, the staff of Yen Minh believe Otter would enable them to extend Firefly treatment to some premature newborns and others newborns who need additional warming, and they also showed interest in Otter as a means of keeping a baby warm next to its mom.
Yen Minh is the first hospital we’ve ever visited that reported power outages, and they independently asked about getting a battery power source to help them get through a typical 2 hour outage with some active warming still available, as their only current recourse is abundant swaddling and waiting. Fortunately, it just so happens that both MTTS and DtM are both working on battery projects for situations just like this, with MTTS hoping to make theirs charge from either AC or solar after having visited hospitals in Nepal.
We also encountered for the first time a preference for the interface to be mounted along the long side of the bassinet-- possibly because their single Firefly is oriented with the long side facing the healthcare worker and not on a wheeled cart like we’ve seen in other hospitals. We definitely have some good future iteration on iconography and the form factor of the interface cut out for us-- for one thing, in this context, our ‘too cold’ snowflake was interpreted as a fan. Oops.
Caption: A patient at Yen Minh receiving treatment in Firefly, under the cover of a draped hospital gown as this Firefly is positioned right underneath the AC unit.
At the end of our visit we were thrilled to hear that they would be willing to have us out for a longer visit in the future, and with the keen feedback and discussions we had, we are looking forward to coming back with our next iteration of Otter.
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