The MSF Japan Innovation Unit (JIU) and Design that Matters are collaborating on the development of new medical devices for low resource settings. This includes convening need-finding workshops and innovation training sessions with MSF offices in Australia and India, and focused research on the need for improved warming devices within MSF's newborn health program.
With the JIU, MSF is exploring ways to move from a make-do philosophy of adapting equipment from high-resource settings to the design of specific solutions for low-resource settings. In the collaboration, MSF is learning from DtM's approach to the product development process, from needs identification, to building a network of collaborators during prototyping, to managing intellectual property and on to partnering with manufacturers and distributors for impact at scale.
In collaborating with MSF, DtM has the opportunity to learn more about global health in the context of a refugee or displaced persons camp and humanitarian crisis setting. DtM seeks to understand MSF's role providing long-term aid in emergency or post emergency context that last for years and even decades, where the needs of caregivers have evolved from a focus on triage and emergent medicine to a full range of health services. DtM wants to understand how they might adapt the medical devices they have designed for newborn care in a rural hospital to the context of a refugee camp.
