Name: 【TED】Tania Douglas: To design better tech, understand context (To design better tech, understand context | Tania Douglas)
Uploaded: 2018-05-24T15:54:11.000Z
Duration: 8 min 35 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

for medical equipment from hospitals in Africa.

Most of the medical devices used in Africa are imported,

and quite often, they're not suitable for local conditions.

that aren't available to operate and maintain and repair them;

they may not be able to withstand high temperatures and humidity;

and they usually require a constant and reliable supply of electricity.

that may have ended up in an equipment graveyard at some point

is an ultrasound monitor to track the heart rate of unborn babies.

This is the standard of care in rich countries.

In low-resource settings, the standard of care is often

a midwife listening to the baby's heart rate

Now, this approach has been around for more than a century.

It's very much dependent on the skill and the experience of the midwife.

visited an antenatal clinic at a local hospital a few years ago,

when they were students in information technology.

the midwife was not able to hear any heart rate

when trying to listen to it through this horn.

So they invented their own fetal heart rate monitor.

They adapted the horn and connected it to a smartphone.

An app on the smartphone records the heart rate, analyzes it

and provides the midwife with a range of information

are called Aaron Tushabe and Joshua Okello.

was working for an NGO in Botswana that manufactured hearing aids.

Now, he noticed that these hearing aids needed batteries

very often at a cost that was not affordable

In response, and being an engineer, Tendekayi invented

a solar-powered battery charger with rechargeable batteries,

that could be used in these hearing aids.

He cofounded a company called Deaftronics,

which is a hearing aid powered by his invention.

My colleague, Sudesh Sivarasu, invented a smart glove

for people who have suffered from leprosy.

Even though their disease may have been cured,

the resulting nerve damage will have left many of them

The glove has sensors to detect temperature and pressure

It effectively serves as an artificial sense of touch

Sudesh invented this glove after observing former leprosy patients

as they carried out their day-to-day activities,

and he learned about the risks and the hazards in their environment.

we run a course called Health Innovation and Design.

It's taken by many of our graduate students in biomedical engineering.

The aim of the course is to introduce these students

The students are encouraged to engage with communities

as they search for solutions to health-related problems.

One of the communities that we work with is a group of elderly people

A recent class project had the task of addressing hearing loss

The students, many of them being engineers,

set out believing that they would design a better hearing aid.

chatted to their healthcare providers and their caregivers.

They soon realized that, actually, adequate hearing aids already existed,

but many of the elderly who needed them and had access to them

that many of these elderly people were in denial of their hearing loss.

There's a stigma attached to wearing a hearing aid.

They also discovered that the environment in which these elderly people lived

For example, their homes and their community center

were filled with echoes that interfered with their hearing.

So instead of developing and designing a new and better hearing aid,

the students did an audit of the environment,

They also devised a campaign to raise awareness of hearing loss

and to counter the stigma attached to wearing a hearing aid.

Now, this often happens when one pays attention to the user --

One often has to move away from the focus of technology

This approach to understanding a problem through listening and engaging