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Developing sustainable global health technologies: Insight from an initiative to address neonatal hypothermia

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Abstract

Relative to drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines, efforts to develop other global health technologies, such as medical devices, are limited and often focus on the short-term goal of prototype development instead of the long-term goal of a sustainable business model. To develop a medical device to address neonatal hypothermia for use in resource-limited settings, we turned to principles of design theory: (1) define the problem with consideration of appropriate integration into relevant health policies, (2) identify the users of the technology and the scenarios in which the technology would be used, and (3) use a highly iterative product design and development process that incorporates the perspective of the user of the technology at the outset and addresses scalability. In contrast to our initial idea, to create a single device, the process guided us to create two separate devices, both strikingly different from current solutions. We offer insights from our initial experience that may be helpful to others engaging in global health technology development.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Amy Lockwood and Gavin Yamey for their insightful comments on this manuscript, and Jenafir House and Sudhir Borgonha for providing data on Embrace.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Center for Health Policy/Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research, Stanford University, 616 Serra Street, Stanford, USA

    Rajesh Gupta

  2. John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Rajan Patel

  3. West Health Institute, Washington DC, USA

    Naganand Murty

  4. Embrace Innovations, Bangalore, Karnataka, India

    Rahul Panicker & Jane Chen

Authors
  1. Rajesh Gupta
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  2. Rajan Patel
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  3. Naganand Murty
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  4. Rahul Panicker
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  5. Jane Chen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rajesh Gupta.

Ethics declarations

The authors disclose that they have an interest in the results they present, as they are current or former board members, officers, or employees of Embrace, a non-profit organization.

Additional information

The authors analyze their experience to find lessons about how to develop devices designed for sustainable use in low resource settings – based on a design process that incorporates the perspective of the users.

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Gupta, R., Patel, R., Murty, N. et al. Developing sustainable global health technologies: Insight from an initiative to address neonatal hypothermia. J Public Health Pol 36, 24–40 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/jphp.2014.44

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