SIU Newsletter #2 - Solar Powered Operating Rooms, AI in Health & Pediatric Care Innovations

Nov 24

The late and great Dr Hans Rosling wrote in his final piece of work, Factfullness, “There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.” Rather than existing in a space of fear and hopelessness in the face of conflict and displacement, or even blind optimism as shiny digital tools amass, with this newsletter we are on a mission to champion pragmatic systems change and evidence-based innovation efforts, and you know what? The fact of the matter is that sometimes innovation just isn’t ‘sexy’ and that's ok.

This month we highlight some notable strides made in MSF climate change efforts offering an alternative to diesel-powered generators, the launch of a new case focused on improving pediatric wound dressing and some recommended insights from the innovation realms beyond MSF.

We hope these insights ignite some inspiration and opportunity for you. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any thoughts on what you would like to see from this newsletter in the future. Let’s jump in.

MSF SIU Innovation Case Highlights

Humanitarian health innovation seems to be a triple threat in terms of complexity - healthcare is highly risk-averse (for good reason), the humanitarian sector funds are held tight as a valuable finite resource, and many of the innovations globally are targeted at higher income stable contexts. So, how does the MSF Sweden Innovation Unit (SIU) tackle this to produce meaningful humanitarian health innovation outputs?

In a snapshot, the SIU supports members of the MSF movement to bring forward challenges and potential innovative interventions that may deliver a significant impact in the field. We facilitate MSF innovators to collaboratively develop evidence-based interventions alongside the wider movement and help forge necessary external partnerships. Here is a taste of some of the latest SIU Innovation Case activity:

Case One: Solar Powered Air Conditioning - Growing Organically

Status: Scaling and iterating the Solar Aircon Units. Data is still being assessed from the Haitian test case earlier this year to inform the next version.

The Latest: This case has generated some serious interest from the community and is now organically being scaled within the MSF organization at large. Things have really taken off during September and October as 54 solar aircon units have been ordered from 10 different projects within the MSF Operational Centers in Amsterdam and Paris (OCA and OCP). Reach out if you want to explore reducing your reliance on diesel potentially reducing costs, CO2 emissions and making your project a bit more autonomous (and silent)!

Next steps: READ THE PROJECT FACT SHEET HERE to get the most recent insights on this case. If you are in Stockholm, and a part of the MSF community, you can also join us to discuss MSF and the Climate Change Emergency at MSF Sweden office on the 19th of November. Food and drinks at 17:30, debate starts at 18:30 (you can also follow the stream or catch up the recorded event logging into HTTPS://WWW.INSIDEOCB.COM)

Case Two: Pediatric Wound Care Case - Validating the Opportunity

Status: Research and Ideation

The Latest: This case was a continuation of the Pediatric Innovation Hackathon the SIU held in Stockholm in April 2019. The Case team, led by Cristina Huitfeldt, are now working to understand how the burn wound toolkit used in the field by MSF can be improved from a pediatric perspective. We recently held a workshop held to explore design prototypes of 2 concepts identified as being most promising so far.

Next steps: Check out the WOUND CARE CASE PAGE HERE to stay up to date on the case progression.

Case Three: The Peace Vest - Growing Implementation

Status: Implemented

The Latest: The first commercial order will have been completed within 2 years of initial funding from MSF, and will mark the end of the formal development of the kit. The future of the PeACE Vest will be in the hands of a European manufacturing company and supplier and will undergo continual improvement as the vest meets changing contexts in the field over the future. A training module is currently developed to assure the PeACE vest is used properly and security protocols preferably complied.

Next Steps: Finalization of a training module, first series-production and user feedback. READ MORE ON THE CASE PAGE HERE

MSF Innovation Toolkit

Are you an aspiring MSF Innovator or currently working in R&D? If so, make sure to check out the SIU Innovation Toolkit. Here you'll find a range of tools aimed at making your life as an innovating MSFer easier.

If you are interested in getting some added insight on partnering for success, how to kick off a landscape analysis, and other key elements of the innovation process this is the place for you (available for MSFers only).

EXPLORE THE INNOVATION TOOLKIT NOW

This Week's Progress Highlight - NHS AI Guidelines

What it is: The UK's NHS released its DIGITAL HEALTH QUALITY STANDARD GUIDELINES for clinicians, healthcare decision-makers and innovators in December 2018. These guidelines aimed to enable innovators to have a benchmark for measuring their fit with the NHS system, and also a scoresheet for decision-makers to understand which solutions were most appropriate fits for their needs. It was generally seen as a great stride in providing a framework of understanding around clinical evidence requirements for digital health solutions.

However, there was something missing - guidance on how to navigate the partnerships and regulation of AI-based health solutions. Nearly exactly a year on this week, the NHS has released its AI REPORT addressing some of the considerations in AI-enabled health innovations.

Quick Insights:

Despite progress in healthcare AI in recent years just under half of the products available globally identified by the authors have market authorization
There are many use cases for healthcare AI (from workflow optimization, clinical decision support, advanced imaging, patient self-triage tools, etc.).
The report highlighted that diagnosis and screening tools are the most common uses of AI, with 132 different AI products identified across 70 therapeutic areas
Looking to the International sphere The World Health Organization (WHO) in partnership with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has established a Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health (FG-AI4H)

Why it matters: Whether we like it or not, AI is slowly and surely being integrated into the humanitarian and global health fields. We need individuals within the sector who are capable of asking the hard questions and acting as effective facilitators to successful implementation.

What We're Listening to

Here are two great podcasts we have on our radar that may be interesting to fellow humanitarian health innovators:

That's all Folks 👋

Thanks for reading! We'll loop back with the next newsletter in 2020 - until then stay up to date via the social links below.

Feel free to reach out to us with any questions or comments on siu@stockholm.msf.org - we'd be delighted to continue the conversation!

The SIU Team

Hanna Phelan