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Upcoming important dates, next steps for the Human Milk NCCC Phase II Initiative...
(The HM NCCC initiative's weekly email newsletter comes out every Wednesday.)
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Mark your calendars...
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|  Human Milk NCCC Phase II Learning Session 2, Thursday, October 4, 2012, 9:30 - 3:30, Chapel Hill, NC.
Registration opens next week...
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Stanford students invent a mask to 'save babies'...
| | | Alejandro Palandjoglou was a student at Stanford's design school when he first learned about Bubble CPAP. As part of a course called Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability, the Argentinian designer was invited to a rural Bangladeshi hospital to study the problem. Alongside his teammates David Janka, Neil Mehta, and Elizabeth Zambricki, Palandjoglou spent several weeks observing and talking with doctors about the issue, while the group ideated and sketched concepts for an improved nasal piece.
Their idea was to develop a flexible cup that could be adjusted via elastic straps, to fit faces of all ages. They christened the device AdaptAir. "Initially, I developed a large number of rough prototypes and had meetings with doctors to get their thoughts and reactions," Palandjoglou tells Co.Design. "I'm a hands-on designer and love making prototypes in the shop." Encouraged by reactions from the doctors, he headed home to finish the semester up at Stanford.
Back in California, the team tested the prototypes on infant simulators. They found that it had "a huge impact" in pediatric patients, improving the quality of the treatment across the board. So, using materials that could be easily sterilized to allow for repeat use, they stepped up the prototyping process. It began to look as though AdaptAir could have a life beyond the end of their semester. Then, a grant from entrepreneurial think-tank Social E Labs, and from Stanford Biodesign Global Exchange Program, made it possible for Palandjoglou to take the new prototypes back to Bangladesh, where another round of testing and feedback produced a more developed prototype. That was in August of 2011. "My latest design was shipped about four months ago," he says, writing in late July. "[It's] ready for mass production."
Of course, changing any standard of care in medicine is a huge undertaking. Right now, Palandjoglou is in talks with companies interested in manufacturing AdaptAir, while eagerly awaiting the birth of his own first child. "As a designer," he says of the two-year process, "this has been the most rewarding experience I have ever had."
Click here to learn more....
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The Cheesecake Factory, A Recipe For Health Care?
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|  "I was fascinated by the fact that they had a new menu come out in March 2012 - for example - and that within seven weeks, they had, you know, 15 different new items that the chefs in their restaurants all across the country were cooking, and landing on people's tables. The same month, the guidelines for how patients' headaches with - people with severe migraines - should be taken care of,came out as well. And they happened to note that the last guidelines, which had several medications proven to reduce migraine headaches in patients, hadn't been followed. In fact, it had been 13 years and still, fewer than one-third of severe migraine patients had gotten the recommended care....I watched this talented young grill chef - named Mauricio - make a hibachi steak. And did he follow the recipe on the screens that they flash up in front of him? He didn't. He said, "I've got the recipe right here in my head. I know what I'm doing." And so then I puzzled over, you know, how did they make the hibachi steak end up being similar from one place to the other and, you know, get to the quality that people at the Cheesecake Factory go there for, and keep the price down? And the answer was that there was a kitchen manager who looked at every dish that came off the line; rated it on a scale of one to 10 - and said hey, this looks good enough to go out to the customers, this one doesn't - and he coached them along towards what they were aiming for. I tried to imagine that in my operating room - you know, someone who hour by hour, looked at everything that I was doing and then said, you know, here's what we've really got to work on; I think we've got to change this and we've got to change that and, you know, you're wasting, you know, money and resources as well...." - Dr. Atul Gawande
Click here to listen to this story on Morning EditionClick here to read the New Yorker article - Big Med: Restaurant chains have managed to combine quality control, cost control, and innovation. Can health care?
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HM NCCC Monthly Webinar
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|  The September HM NCCC Webinar is scheduled for Tuesday, September 11, 2:00 - 3:00 PM. Monthly Webinars generally are the second Tuesday of the month at 2:00 PM and last no more than an hour. The updated schedule is always available at the link below.
to access the webinar.
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Contact
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Keith M Cochran
PQCNC Debrouillard / Impresario
Keith_Cochran@unc.edu |
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