Firefly’s impact continues to grow, and fast! With new units in Uganda, Nigeria, Somaliland, and Tanzania, as of September 2015, DtM partners Thrive Health and Vietnamese manufacturing partner...
A Great Year for Firefly: 2014 Stats
DtM Kicks off CPAP Design Workshops
Today, Design that Matters kicked off a series of design workshops and product implementation coaching with Dr. Ryan Carroll to design an innovative Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) device to save babies from respiratory distress and pneumonia. Pneumonia is the leading cause of death in children under five worldwide - more than AIDS, Malaria, or TB. The goal of our collaboration is to expose the CPAP team to design thinking methods and help the team construct strategies for implementing CPAP to have massive impact for the poor in LMICs.
In our first work session together, we were joined by Smitha Gudapakkam from the MGH Center for Global Health. We covered a lot of ground, including forming a point of view about the need, users, and context for the project; creating an hypothesis for how the program will reach massive impact; prioritizing critical assumptions for the project to reach impact; and then brainstorming over 50 ideas for how how the CPAP could be supplied to hospitals. Throughout the workshop, we used quick sketching techniques to make ideas easier to understand and more memorable.
In one exercise, we drew slider bars to better depict tensions inherent in the project. One of the central tensions is between making a device that is extremely easy-to-use right out of the box, versus an assembly of off-the-shelf parts that can be more easily repaired. In the United States, CPAP is one of the few devices that is often assembled by healthcare professionals from off-the-shelf parts, even at the highest level hospitals. Ryan noted that having local technicians and healthcare providers build the devices themselves becomes a critical milestone in their training, building confidence to treat babies.
The workshop was just in time for Ryan to return to Uganda and put these new methods and ideas to work. We look forward to hearing back from Uganda and to taking design thinking even further in our next workshop this Fall!
About the CAMTech CPAP
The CPAP is the center of a novel education program to enable hospitals to diagnose and effectively treat respiratory distress, while building capacity to repair their own CPAP devices locally. The project received the MGH Center for Global Health CAMTech Innovation Award in 2013. Dr. Ryan Carroll is currently co-creating the training program and device with team members from the Mbarara University of Science and Technology and Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital in Uganda.
Pop the Champagne! Firefly Has Treated Over 1,000 Newborns!
We are excited to announce that Firefly has treated over 1,000 newborns in Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia! While 1,000 newborns treated is an amazing milestone, we are even more excited that the 72 devices currently distributed will treat over 35,000 newborns during their lifetime.
Firefly’s unique double sided design allows it to reduce treatment times by almost 50%, but more importantly, allows for effective treatment of severe jaundice allowing infants around the world to avoid dangerous exchange transfusions, which require all of the blood in the newborn to be replaced. We have already seen Firefly’s impact as it has entered areas rife with severe jaundice, like Myanmar. We can't wait to tell the story of the next 1,000 or 10,000 babies treated as we plow ahead in helping to address jaundice worldwide.
Design that Matters would like to express our sincere thanks to our Firefly project partners the East Meets West Foundation and Vietnamese manufacturer Medical Technology Transfer and Services. Their partnership made Firefly possible.
Additional thanks to Firefly’s lead donors: The Lemelson Foundation, The van Otterloo Family, Bohemian Foundation, an anonymous donor, ANT Italy - Friends of Trento Neonatology, The Autonomous Province of Trento, Italy, and Martin and Debbie Hale.
DtM Fabricates CAMTech Infant Resuscitator Models for Instant Feedback in Uganda
At a check-in meeting mid-month at the MGH Center for Global Health, Dr. Kris Olson mentioned that the lead engineer for CAMTech’s Augmented Infant Resuscitator (AIR) project was headed to Uganda to test their engineering prototype. CAMTech had worked with an industrial designer to create a set of renderings - photo images depicting the final product appearance. During DtM’s experiences in the field, we found that physical models always generate richer feedback than photos, so we offered to help.
Less than 48 hours after our meeting, Tim presented physical models built on DtM’s 3D printer converting three of their design sketches into reality. Thanks to some speedy design work from Will, who had to come in after hours because of jury duty, the prototypes were precise enough to screw into existing threads on existing Laerdal masks, illustrating how AIR will add functionality to existing resuscitators. The next week, CAMTech team member Kevin Cedrone was in Uganda, testing the concepts with target users. Tim says, Buck Rodgers!