How might we reduce the spread of infections in hospitals?

What if you come to visit the hospital for a regular health checkup and end up getting hospitalized for acquiring some other infection?

With the pandemic, the hospital situation was suffering from a systemic collapse. In this junction, there was a requirement for reducing the risk of infection to the healthcare workers. One in four COVID cases were caught by hospital inpatients initially admitted for other reasons

The current solutions such as disinfections and fumigation were ineffective when it comes to frequently used spaces

Solution

A UV-C enabled hand rail steriliser that automatically disinfects confined spaces within hospitals such as elevators. The product automatically disinfects spaces when the space is less occupied.

Impact

• Working closely with the co-founders to drive the vision, product strategy for UVfy, leading to its adoption across 7 hospitals in India with 3000+ daily active users (healthcare workers)
• Led a team of developers, designers and ǪA engineers and managed cross functional communication to launch the IoT product in 7 months (despite pandemic lockdown)
• Utilized AI/machine learning models to improve the accuracy of UVfy to 98%. This led to the successful medical approval (CSIR) and adoption across hospitals

Design Process

As you might be aware, UV-C is the most effective for disinfection, but yet shouldn't be exposed to humans for longer periods to health risks.

So we designed for the worst-case scenario, a control system that tracks the frequency of usage for a reliable operation.

The conventional design process couldn't adjust to the complexity of the situation we were facing.

The need for reducing infections was also changing in relation to the pandemic waves)

We followed a double helix instead of a double diamond. Iterated in multiple knowledge loops.

Of course, hospitals are not the only segment having elevators, right?

Gaining insights from 120+ stakeholders, we tested our product through pilots in hotels, universities, hospitals. These paid pilots acted as 'proof-of-work' helping us validate and land our first client.

After narrowing our focus to hospitals, we started realizing the complexities in the healthcare space.

The solutions had to be more systemic. You not only had to design for the patient but also take into account the doctors, management staff, infection control nurses etc.

Business (viability), Design (desirability) as well as Engineering (feasibility) had to go hand in hand for us to make crucial decisions for the company.

Along these lines, pricing strategy, revenue models, target segmentation etc came in handy to balance tech with business.

We ended up iterating multiple times on our pitch, market, customers, product features etc.

This was made possible through a system to integrate the feedback and translate them into actionable steps for the company.

The value proposition we provided for our customers was through reduced patient stay and reduced staff absenteeism through reduced infections.

This was communicated in a consistent form through websites, brochures, lab test reports etc. Everything had to speak the same language.

Designing for manufacturability, we had to make it easier for the service engineers to install our product in hospitals.

So we got back to the drawing-room and made an IKEA-style installation manual to make it easier for third parties (distributors, service engineers etc)