Working and brainstorming with my Hackathon group from the Innovate For Africa (IFA) forum this past week has been both tasking and exciting. We are learning and implementing what design thinking is all about; a process for creative problem solving from a human point of view. We have worked consistently to conduct primary market research while displaying empathy, grit and dedication.
As a team, we are concerned about the lack of a data management system in many hospitals in Nigeria, medical health care providers are often faced with poor diagnosis, late detection and even the death of their patients due to a lack of patient medical history. How might we provide a digital data management platform for the healthcare system that significantly improves the efficiency of doctors in the hospital through the availability of these records?
There is a need for a central platform used in hospitals that integrates and analyzes medical records and data for more efficient patient care and service.
It is our vision that this system will not only work in individual hospitals but can be shared across board for hospital clusters for example, government hospitals, hospitals owned by the same private individual as well as HMO signed hospitals. This is reasonable assuming that most people would visit similar clusters of hospitals eg a lady who visits a government owned hospital in Lagos state is more likely to visit another government owned hospital in Abuja.
Before we started interviews, we needed to understand what our customer persona looked like. We believe this system would benefit both health care users and providers. Below is a draft of customer persona.
As a result of constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, we took a decision to conduct interviews via zoom where 2 team members jointly interviewed a potential customer. With one team member conducting the interview and another recording responses. Even though we had a list of questions for customers, we left them open ended to ensure that the customers felt heard and were allowed to give additional information which we in turn found very useful. The set questions included;
Healthcare providers
1. Have you ever made a mistake diagnosing a patient due to the unavailability of medical records?
2. What are the Implications of Inconsistent medical data supply on the healthcare system and the national economy?
3. What’s your opinion on data analytics and management in the healthcare sector? Does the information help to make decisions? And is it rich enough that we can really figure out why something is happening?
4. Are adequate health IT infrastructures available to ensure proper data collection, and what can be done better about it?
As one of my interviewees mentioned, every problem has to start with a good diagnosis and a data central platform will give healthcare workers the basis for such good diagnosis. As we continue to interview more people, we are faced with the realities of the constraints of such a system which include; the rigorous work needed to update these systems to make them useful, the funding for such a task and the challenges of security and confidentiality attached.
A key takeaway from the interviews showed me how potential customers sometimes are skeptical to buy into a product even when it might be helpful. In a country like Nigeria, a data management system would greatly improve the quality of the healthcare system, however, healthcare providers hold some reservations concerning it such as the lack of infrastructure and funds to maintain it. These reservations are mainly borne out of a distrust for the government. With design thinking, the users are priority. so moving forward, we will integrate and refine the process until we are certain that the needs of the users are priority and the system is not only based on our desire to see the healthcare system thrive.
