Respite for Nigeria’s Unintegrated Healthcare System

Hackathon As Best Match For Market Research

To innovate, a hackathon is one of the techniques used to distil assumptions to gather market intelligence from respondents based on qualitative and quantitative forms of analysis.

A hackathon, therefore, is a meeting between the group leading research within a short period and the respondents to develop a basic version of a product or service in the pilot phase, which could be a beta version or a minimum viable product (MVP) to help test the market as a form prototype before the development of the same in full scale.

Leading Change

Following the rigorous selection process of fellows for the Innovate for Africa (IFA) Fellowship. Successful fellows have been tasked with one of IFA’s core values, which is to be innovative and in turn provide solutions that can change the quality of lives with a mix of other factors such as grit, creativity and collaboration.

Design Thinking for driving Innovation

As one of the fellows for 2021, we were taken through an intensive one-week hands-on training concerning design thinking. The impact of learning design thinking is similar to how Toyota emerged to become the number one auto-maker in the world through the introduction of Total Quality Management (TQM). While TQM has had its benefits to a lot of organization. Design thinking has become the next frontier to reduce risks and costs, increase employee buy-in and provide superior solutions. Most successful startups today employ design thinking to power the innovation associated with their offerings.

The Problem In The Health Sector In Nigeria

Team two comprising of myself (Emmanuel Otori), Sadiku Feyistan, Chilo Nwokolo, Israel and Ugonna Okore began the process of the hackathon by working on developing a problem statement associated with management of data in the health sector. We decide to make the problem statement to be the lack of a database management system which prevents health practitioners to record, reference or use patient’s medical records to conduct proper diagnosis or make referrals.

The Primary Market Research Process

The process used for conducting the primary market research includes a mix of online meetings using zoom, questions and answers via email as well as surveys using Google forms.

Having interviewed prospective customers answering 10 different questions as follows

1. If they had used an electronic data management system before?

2. What feature they would like to see in an electronic management system for health records

3. What is the disadvantage of using a traditional filing system?

4. How long does it take to match a patient’s card and their hard copy files?

5. Where they have used the electronic management system before if they had access to any?

6. What challenges do they face in the health sector as a result of lack of proper data management?

7. If they think covid-19 has been properly managed using data management?

8. If they consider data sharing of patient’s file among health practitioners?

9. Utilizing a central system to enhance information sharing across stakeholders involved in treatment?

10. If they have experienced mix up or loss of patient’s information.

Employing The Techniques Of Design Thinking

All the questions asked help in employing the five processes of design thinking that include empathizing by understanding the problem or need, defining the problem, ideating by understanding the overall context, creating a prototype and testing the product before release.

The Lessons and Insights

I learnt from conducting primary market research that one is bound to have many assumptions and until one can fill the same space of the user, a viable solution cannot be created. It is, therefore, necessary that before releasing a product, a proper understanding of the problem and the proposed solution is taken into consideration.