Day 4: Simulation Training

August 5th, 2014

Talks and Hands-on Training
Ida Newman opened the morning with a dicussion on essential care for everybaby. She spoke about good global health practices and how to conduct efficient interviews. She also talked about training programs such as Mama Natalie, Mama Breast, and Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC). Following her talk, we broke out into groups to get some practice with the Mama Breast and the KMC devices. We learned about the simulation devices, training, and got to even wear them and try them out!

Shruthi trying out a Kangaroo Mother Care wrap

Aaron trying out Mama Breast and Kangaroo Mother Care+

Tor Garvik, the next speaker for the morning, had an inspirational speech about the steps of product development and making the greatest impact. He stressed that the criteria for the product need to stem efficiently from the clinical needs to the deliverable solution, and that understanding the problem is more important than developing a solution.

After Tor, Carolyn, a JHU alumni who started working for Laerdal two years ago, gave a talk on the product development engineering process with insights into her projects. She focused on field visits and conducting interviews and stressing the best practices for these immersion opportunities.

Our last talk of the morning was led by Sunny Chen, a past CBID alumni, who works with Laerdal Global Health. Sunny talked about work flow anaylsis and how to manage your time well during the product development process. In particular, he spoke about the importance of keeping good agendas of meetings including action items and Gantt charts to help stay organized.

Following our morning talks we had a breakout session where we were fortunate enough to learn about the rapid prototyping process and development of three of Laerdal's products: the Mama breast, the MOYO fetal heart rate monitor, and the Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) wrap. We each spent some time taking a look at the products, understanding their progression and changes over time with different iterations.

After another delicious lunch at Laerdal, we had a group session on Ideation and it's process. We each worked with a partner to take our image of an ideal wallet and create a marketable product that adressed the need. This was a great activity for understanding the steps of ideation and defining problems that align to user needs.

Maddie and Wes making a presentation about their wallet

Evening Fun
After we got back from our busy day at Laerdal, we all went back to the hotel to grab a quick nap and get changed. Sunny met us at the hotel a little later to take us around the town. When we all met up, Sunny suggested we go to the grocery store and buy food to have a picnic. After picking up a portable grill, hot dogs, and snacks, Sunny led us on a long walk around Stavanger. We ended up at a beautiful park with a boathouse right on the water, where we set up and had a nice relaxing meal.

Boat house near our picnic site