VIETNAM GLOBAL HEALTH -- VISITING ST. PAUL HOSPITAL

After we visited the injection molder, we then visited St. Paul Hospital, a provincial hospital located in the heart of Hanoi.  Though we are targeting district hospitals – which are typically smaller and have fewer resources in terms of staff, funding, and capabilities – our interview with doctors from St. Paul was fruitful.  We received two validating responses to the user experience around Otter’s interface, which we have been working throughout this past semester.  (Upon asking Dr. Duong Nguyen to set the temperature to 33 degC, she pressed the buttons and then shot us a glance that said, “Is that it?”)

Elizabeth Johansen (ADE Advisor), Nurse Bach (St. Paul Hospital), and

Dr. Hanh Nguyen (St. Paul Hospital) try the Otter prototype interface.

We also began formulating a clearer picture of medical need around Otter used in conjunction with Firefly phototherapy, our primary use-case. To better uncover this information, we created a new prop nary an hour prior to the interview: the patient flipbook.  The patient flipbook allows us to quickly ask healthcare workers about which equipment they would use with a variety of patients with jaundice by highlighting four characteristics: gestational age, weight, core temperature, and jaundice severity.  There is a range per characteristic (ex: mild jaundice to severely jaundice), again – allowing us to quickly cover a broad range of patients and their hypothetical journeys.

Flipbook to explore the best warming & phototherapy devices for different newborns.

Dr. Hanh Nguyen (St. Paul Hospital), Liani Lye (ADE), and Hoa Dang Thanh

(MTTS translator) use the patient flipbook at St Paul General Hospital.

Though these are two positive takeaways from our interview, we must retain team- and project-awareness as we progress through the trip.  We must remember to always validate with our target market in mind; demand at a single provincial does not equate to blanket demand at district hospitals.  And, we should continuously balance streamlining our interview process against eliminating interviewing bias and answering many project questions thoroughly.  Forward and onwards!

Global Health (Vietnam) - Day 4

In the morning, our team met in the hotel lobby to discuss the plan for the day before walking a few blocks to MTTS. At MTTS, we launched into a design review of the Otter Warmer concept with Greg, Steffen and Chloe Nguyen, an MTTS Fellow. Our discussion began with a double-layer plastic bassinet, and ended with a single-layer bassinet. Their ideas of ways to reduce cost and materials cut the cost of materials by nearly 1/3!

We examined the single layer
bassinet prototype during our meeting

After a quick lunch and another dose of thick, creamy, local coffee, most of the team went to the tertiary (national) hospital, National Obstetrics Hospital, also called C-hospital (because they do a lot of C-sections) near the city center. A second smaller team worked with MTTS to discuss the bill of materials and brainstorm ways of reducing costs. Our hospital visits and interviews from yesterday gave us more confidence and preparation, enabling us to make the most of our short hospital visit today.

As we walked into the NICU at Hospital C, doctors and nurses stopped writing their notes at the nearest long-table to make room for our hour-long interview. In a small room across hall, we could see at least 20 newborns in cribs, incubators, or phototherapy devices. When looking to the right down the hall, we observed that all of the rooms were packed with babies receiving some sort of treatment or under observation. This hospital takes care of an average of 160 babies per day, not to mention many of these babies had been referred by other hospitals who could not provide the level of care needed. Considering the nurses and doctors were constantly running in and out of the room, we were deeply grateful for the assistant director’s time!

So many babies in many different rooms!

We saw some babies being treated by Firefly!

Co-design session with the doctor!