Patient Centric Adherence Strategies
Enhancing DATs for TB recovery regime to support patients and their care network
Position :
Design Researcher
Timeline:
April 2021 - September 2021
Client:
Global Health Labs
Project under NDA
Enhancing DATs for TB care
Despite tuberculosis (TB) being curable and preventable, it is one of the leading causes of death by an infectious agent globally. As per the India TB Report 2020, there were an estimated 2.69 million cases of TB in India, accounting for a quarter of all global TB cases.
Adherence to the prescribed treatment is crucial for curing TB and minimizing the chances of developing drug resistance. However due to the long treatment duration(6 months minimum for DS-TB), medication dosage, and their side effects, it's a tough regime for patients to follow.
Digital Adherence technologies (DATs) help towards better adherence. Through DATs, a patient’s progress in treatment can be digitally monitored, and accordingly, support can be extended by the healthcare providers whenever needed.
The client had engineered prototypes of DATs and approached Surgo Ventures to research and test how they can help DS-TB patients adhere to their medication regularly in the Indian ecosystem in the public and private sectors.
My role on the team
Design Researcher leading remote design research and concept visualization
I worked as a part of the design research team with Surgo Ventures. We collaborated with a team of analysts, TB experts, and behavioral scientists simultaneously leading the expert and literature-driven research.
My work focused on understanding patient behaviors and their challenges around TB medication adherence in India through qualitative user research, delivering insights, and proposing an adoption strategy for designed technology in the Indian context.
Key learnings
When we began our project, the second wave of the COVID was at its peak in India. Adapting design research methodologies for remote research through local tools like WhatsApp, simple images to navigate the complex ecosystems of care, the sensitivity of the topic, and communication across languages enabled me to grow my practice as a researcher.
Putting complex tech into use cases through visual tools played a key role in enabling smoother communication with stakeholders and collaboration across teams. It helped users understand with ease the complex technologies being presented and give their feedback on it.
Overall, generating user and system-level insights to guide iterative product design, and the scope of impact, and collaborating with a diverse team was an inspiring exposure to product innovation.