This Monday some of the past editions’ Clinical Innovation Fellows (Katarina Hedbeck from TADA, Louise Warme from Lara Diagnostics and Patrick Nilsson from Ortrud), the Clinical Innovation Team and present fellows (Fritzi, John and me) went to Dublin, for a mingle and workshop.
There we met with fellows from Bio-innovate Galway and D-Health Barcelona, to discuss different issues such as reimbursement, funding and how to work together as alumni.
Just one week left. We are preparing for graduation by trying to finish as much of our work as possible this upcoming week. In one week’s time we are graduating from the CIF program and will be standing on our own feet as fellows. Until then we need to tie together as much things as we possibly can. This week we have had a meeting with our clinical supervisor Sophia to discuss how to move forward with the improvement work at the clinic after we are no longer there. We are discussing with our students and helping them prepare for their final presentations. We are putting together the final work on our own business plan on how to move forward with it. We are applying for grants and looking for other funding.
As CIF gets closer to an end we need to plan ahead on how to proceed, especially since we will have to manage our resources as optimally as possible, since they are going to be scarce.
Something very similar between Spain and Sweden is how there is a month each year where conducting business and initiatives can be very slow and difficult, as both countries really DO enjoy summertime. Taking that into account, things can get very difficult during summer, so we have to plant a lot of seeds now, and even sow some early crops before!
Timing, timing, timing!
What will happen in a year? In two? In five? These are the questions that have been crowding team O’s head for the last couple of weeks. We need to make decisions about the future. With very little knowledge about the future. Interesting, difficult and time-consuming. To our aid we have had our final meeting with Gustav, team psychologist. We met him on Monday. With him we discussed different potential futures and how our own input would change depending on what we will be doing.
Fritzi in our group psychology session.
This week we had our last reference group meeting, where our master students presented to the Reference Group the current status of their projects and what would be the best way forward.
We only have a few weeks left of the CIF-program. It is time to start and tie together are different programs. Meanwhile the heads of the program are recruiting new teams for September. Very exciting for them! Mixed feelings for us! We are soon ready to graduate but there are still so many things left to do and also that would be fun to do within the program.
This week we have entered Venture Cup! We are excited about the opportunity and looking forward to hear feedback from them – as many people say that one of the best things with Venture Cup is the feedback part.
Entering venture cup!
We also had our last reference group meeting. All our master students presented what they’ve done so far and got feedback from the department. They have been working hard on making the flow at the operation room better, discovering how to improve routines around the drg-coding, making sure that patients know what is going on and finding a way to minimizing the waste at the department through smarter containers. It’s impressive how hard they have all worked, what progress they have made and what solutions they have found. We really hope it will add value to the Women’s department!
Alexandra and Julia, engineering master students, presenting their project about improving DRG routines.
This afternoon we are going to a lecture and networking event at doberman, looking forward to it! And then it’s time for another one of CIF’s famous after works- where we meet fellows from previous years. That usually is really fun and rewarding because all of the wisdom these fellows bring with them!
We are looking forward to the last month in the program, hoping to get the most out of these last weeks.
Désirée, Team O
We made it through our Business Mentor meeting, with very valuable feedback about our way forward and how can we tackle some of the different issues we might encounter when trying to address changing patients’ behavior.
And that is probably the crux of the matter: we cannot change patients’ behavior. We can workaround it, we can stimulate it, we can punish it or reward it. But changing it may be as difficult as changing a bad habit, like smoking or eating to much kanelbullar.
With this in mind, we have contacted one of the experts in this: Sven Simonsson, dentist and expert in enhancing dentistry services in order to reduce no-shows and peak perform in patient satisfaction surveys. His insights have been very valuable to us, as now we have a 30 year hands-on experience point of view to our approach.
Sven in how to manage patient perception
Finally we also had a dress rehearsal for our students, as they have their Reference Group Meeting next Wednesday. It seems that they are eager to show their progress!
(You can always reach us at: teaminfection@clinicalinnovation.se)
José (Team Infection)
This week we had our last business mentor meeting. We presented our product pitch, showed them our business plan and had a long open discussion with feedback and comments. I think this was the best meeting so far and gave us a lot of motivation for the future.
John van Leer, Carina Franzén
This week we also worked on making a murderer, kidding, prototype, making a prototype, of a breast. Down below you can see a pictures of the mold where we are trying to cast a fake breast for our breastfeeding experiments.
First real test with midwifes and patients!
We also spent one day at the hospital with a midwifes and several real patients where we did a simulation of our product to see how the moms with breastfeeding problems would interact with our product. We learned a lot from this observation and will adjust the product according to what we learned.
Peace!
//John
Designer
As we advanced last week, we need to gather more learnings about how can we influence patients’ behavior and how can we make a significant impact on this.
With this in mind, we are going back to how patients interact with healthcare and how staff interact with patients, with the aim of finding gaps and filling them.
Welcome again to the infectious diseases clinic!
We’ve been calling patients as well to find out how and why/why not do they make it to their appointments. What tools do they use to remind their appointments? What kind of situations are the ones that make interaction with healthcare more difficult? How would they prefer to be contacted? (and so on…)
We’re also preparing for out last business mentor meeting, where we will expose to our business mentors our business plans and how are we aiming to achieve our different goals.
(You can always reach us at: teaminfection@clinicalinnovation.se)
José (Team Infection)
So this week and the end of last we have been focusing on working on our business plan, working on our technical readiness level and discussing with moms and midwives.
Our team work today looks quite different then the first weeks of the program. In the beginning my medical knowledge was essential for the rest but suddenly everyone is focusing on their expertise and I (the doctor) help with whatever I can.
Technology wise Fritzi is working hard on putting our solution into an actual working product. We are extremely lucky to have someone that knows electrical engineering this well – she has taught me things I didn’t even know I didn’t know. She has been working on simulations and thinking how to put together our idea.
Fritzi working with super secret engineering stuff
John, our designer, is making sure we are always close to our customers. Him and me went to Danderyds MVC yesterday to talk to pregnant women and new mothers and show them our concept. So far a majority of positive mothers have been seen, which of course gives us the proof to keep on working on our idea. However we can never be certain that the product will be bought just because mothers are positive to pictures and ideas. John also keep us working close to the midwifes and we ended last week with a workshop with some of the midwives that are experts on breastfeeding. Getting their perspective on our ida was very valuable. John is also looking in on the actual design of our product, checking plausibility, costs and doing sketches.
John doing some sketches for the team.
For the business plan Carina, our business manager, of course is taking the lead. She has been digging deep into how to make a strategic plan for the upcoming months and years with all the unknowns that we have.
Meanwhile, I am trying to support the other three as much as I can. Setting up meetings and preparing for them, connecting us to the right people, digging into the medical and public health perspectives, writing blog posts, preparing for tests, and helping out with proposals. I am learning a lot on the way and reading up on the lean start up method. Learning new things was one of my main objectives for the program so I am happy about that!
That’s it for now!
Désirée, MD, Team O
