title: Developing sustainable global health technologies: insight from an initiative to address neonatal hypothermia.
abstract: Relative to drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines, efforts to develop other global health technologies, such as medical devices, are limited and often focus on the short-term goal of prototype development instead of the long-term goal of a sustainable business model. To develop a medical device to address neonatal hypothermia for use in resource-limited settings, we turned to principles of design theory: (1) define the problem with consideration of appropriate integration into relevant health policies, (2) identify the users of the technology and the scenarios in which the technology would be used, and (3) use a highly iterative product design and development process that incorporates the perspective of the user of the technology at the outset and addresses scalability. In contrast to our initial idea, to create a single device, the process guided us to create two separate devices, both strikingly different from current solutions. We offer insights from our initial experience that may be helpful to others engaging in global health technology development.
authors.affiliation: Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Center for Health Policy/Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research, Stanford University, 616 Serra Street, Stanford, USA.
authors.forename: Rajesh
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gupta
authors.affiliation: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Rajan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Patel
authors.affiliation: West Health Institute, Washington DC, USA.
authors.forename: Naganand
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Murty
authors.affiliation: Embrace Innovations, Bangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Rahul
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Panicker
authors.affiliation: Embrace Innovations, Bangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Jane
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D020811:Biomedical Technology / Q000191:economics / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003906:Developing Countries; D004867:Equipment Design; D014943:Global Health; D006801:Humans; D007035:Hypothermia / Q000628:therapy*; D007231:Infant, Newborn