This last week, at the Innovate For Africa innovation readiness program, we had our pitch day for our hackathon ideas. I like to describe a hackathon as a project where individuals of different expertise come together to create magic. It is intense work that’s rewarding. Over a course of 3 weeks, I worked with 3 individuals on identifying a problem in data collection and management of medical records in the healthcare sector of Nigeria. We didn’t stop there, we went ahead to create a solution we believe is going to change the course of things. This problem in data management resonated deeply with me. As a mental health care provider, I understand the challenges that come with diagnosis and detection of mental illnesses due to a lack of proper record keeping, it not only delays therapy but can be frustrating to clients.
For us to ensure that the hackathon problem and solution were customer centered, we were taught how to use “Design Thinking”.
Design thinking is the process of creatively solving a problem using cognitive, strategic and practical methods. It includes 5 stages; empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test.
In empathizing, we listened to what our potential customers were saying, there is no room to force our solutions on them. As I conducted my interviews, I realized how people really delved into the problem when I provided a listening ear. I empathized by understanding the pain points doctors had when diagnosing a health problem as well as the frustrations from healthcare users when their records went missing.
After listening to health care workers and users talk about their experiences with data management, we were able to better define a problem that was customer centered. This stage involves creating a problem statement that was concise to sum up the customer challenge.
"In many hospitals in Nigeria, medical health care providers are often faced with
poor diagnosis, late detection and even the death of patients due to a lack of patient medical history. How might we provide a secure digital data management platform for
the healthcare system that significantly improves the efficiency of doctors in the hospitals through the availability of these medical records."
In ideating, we now had a clearer view of customers needs than when we initially began. We then had a brainstorming session using Storm Board where we thought long and hard about what the solution should encompass. It gave us the opportunity to accept some ideas while rejecting some. It was at this stage that “Nimra Health” was birthed.
We identified Users and market size:
In creating a prototype, we needed to really dig deep to come up with this solution that was customer centric, it needed to be something our potential customers could look at and connect with immediately. We went ahead to use figma and canva to take us through the journey. Here are some aspects of our prototype.
This first picture is a glance at what Nimra Health is proposing; A one stop system for patients medical records that every health worker in a hospital can access to gain information that is valuable in diagnosis and detection of illnesses. To ensure security, only doctors with a recognized ID can log in to this.
This page shows where doctors/nurses can log in and upload information for every patient visit.
So far, we continue to work on Nimra Health based on feedback from stakeholders.
The best part of this project was Pitch Day, tensions ran wild and fast but we were ready to present our work in the best way. There was something amazing about presenting the cumulative of days of hard work. I enjoyed working on my story telling skills to best present the work.
For pitch day, we also worked on other aspects such as identifying our competitors;
Since this was not a non-profit project, we needed to identify ways to make money;
We researched on suitable marketing plans for our users;
And finally, financial projections for this project;
In reflecting on this project, I have learnt to iterate over and over again at every step. This means that I am slow to fall in love with my ideas no matter how great they sound. It is important that the clients are at the core of the problem and the solution.
I also learnt how to better work effectively in a group, it is something that I have been working on perfecting, I was glad to see how I have improved.
Lastly, I was reminded once again that I can do anything I put my mind to. Design Thinking was completely new to me which made it daunting at the start of the program. It’s amazing to see that I have the capacity to learn and create.
I will not be forgetting this experience in a while.