Team Gold: The Journey Begins…
From watching videos about establishing start-ups to interviewing physicians about a Capstone project regarding vital sign monitoring in low-resource settings, it’s safe to say that this week kept us on our toes. However, it was extremely gratifying. It was the first week of the Biodesign Immersion Experience, a six-week program curtailed to understanding how bioengineers develop ideas and interact with stakeholders and customers to ultimately create the product that suits them best.
Starting a Start-up
Our journey as Team Gold began by watching a set of videos by Steve Blank, an entrepreneur and lecturer at UC Berkeley, detailing how to approach creating a start-up company. One of the most common myths was debunked right at the start: the viewpoint that start-ups are but a smaller version of large companies and corporations, and nothing more. Once that was cemented in our heads, we learned more about how the founders of start-ups are creating their business models incorrectly based on large companies. It was at this point in which we were introduced to the Business Model Canvas (BMC), which we will continue to work on throughout the course of the internship. The BMC, an organized chart of several components related to selling a product, provides us with certain metrics that we must be aware of, such as value propositions and customer segments. We are currently in the process of editing the above two components for the Capstone project we will strive to perfect: monitoring vital systems for patients in low-resource regions.
Capstone Project and Interview with Dr. Wang
After we were accustomed to the BMC, we decided to get to know more about what it is that we need to apply it to. The project we were given was dedicated to fixing the issues that low-resource settings face in terms of poor healthcare. Sepsis, a condition that arises when an infection is so severe that it causes the body to attack its own organs, was the emphasis of the Capstone group. Certain vital signs such as heart rate and temperature correlate to an increased probability of septic shock, which may be disastrous for the patient. According to the group’s research, many countries in Africa do not possess the manpower and technology to prevent sepsis in patients, and the ratio of nurses to patients is anywhere between 1–30 and 1–72, compared to the U.S.’s 1–6. The mortality rate in Bugando hospital in Tanzania is around 24%, while it can be up to four times lower in hospitals in the U.S.
As a result, our Capstone group decided to create a product that would lessen the burden on doctors and nurses in places like Tanzania, and centered their paper around a patch designed to alleviate these concerns. After reading about these unfortunate statistics, our group decided to meet and discuss possible ways of improving the Capstone project, and we started out by scheduling an interview on Friday, June 11, 2021, with Dr. Richard Wang, a physician at UCSF and mentor for the Capstone project, who spent time in Malawi and Uganda.
Our First Interview
We began the interview by asking Dr. Wang about his experience in low-resource healthcare settings, and he began to discuss how he spent lots of time in Malawi as a medical school student and in Tanzania for his residency. He mentioned that the available resources are much different than compared to the US. There are fewer nurses operating the medical devices to measure vital signs, and the machines themselves may be outdated, reused, or damaged. In the intensive care unit (ICU), situations are worsened; patients are very unstable and it is simply impossible for so many patients to be taken care of, leading to a greater rate of septic shock among them. Additionally, fluctuating access to power and water worsen situations for patients and hospital staff. Along with economic issues, political problems reside as well. Although macropolitics is not as big of a concern, Dr. Wang brought up the issue of accountability; those responsible for using and maintaining the devices to monitor vital signs lack initiative or enthusiasm. We then asked him about his opinion of the Capstone project, which he jovially exclaimed to be “a great idea!” He continued to state that a product that simply functions properly and is accurate in its measurements is enough to make an effect in low-resource settings. In other words, we had a product that has massive potential, and we hope to interact with more customers to improve it!
