REDESIGN TOOLS FOR PUBLIC HEALTHCARE
The provision of health services for mothers, children and other vulnerable populations in rural areas represents an extraordinary multimodal challenge - who is responsible for the ‘intentional design of these public health services’ and how they must accomplish it is a question that is not often delved into.
The Bihar Innovation Lab, a user-centered and systems design thinking led program run by Center for Knowledge Societies, has been instrumental in addressing the need to ‘design’ health services and specific key components of their delivery, to transform the current public health system into a more well being oriented system. These components range from new products, tools and technologies, protocols, communications strategies to new services and service delivery mechanisms.
One of the projects, that I was a part of, focused on revisiting the use and impact of a labour progression monitoring tool known as the Partograph - a paper-based tool that helps health workers record and monitor the progression of labour in terms of critical information such as,
(i) foetal heart rate,
(ii) cervical dilation,
(iii) blood pressure and,
(iv) contraction
Currently, only ANMs (Auxiliary Nurse Midwifes) and obstetricians are equipped to use the Partograph. In an ideal scenario, the tool assists the health workers in accurately assessing the labour condition and taking timely decisions in the case of complications. However, WHO research states that, in spite of its life saving potential, this tool is not being used mainly because of its cumbersome user interface which signalled the need for a design intervention, addressed through this project with further contextual inquiry. Mapping failures along a mother's labor journey gave insights into obstructed labor and complicated labor, compared to normal labor progression which makes the timely use of Partograph even more crucial to saving mother and child's life.
Mapping Case of an Obstructed Labor in the District Hospital of Bhojpur, Bihar
Mapping a Complicated Labor Journey (Meconium Stain)
Existing Partograph
Other Documents to fill Queue at the Maternity Ward
Proposed Solutions
