Week 12: Last Week of Interviews!

In our last week of interviews, we presented our product for the military use case after learning that while the dual use case could be viable in the future, it would cost too much for us to deploy it in the commercial marketplace. This highlighted some other avenues for us to gather and consolidate information into our product, such as health plans like Kaiser Permanente which hold medical provider information for their own customers. Thinking through these alternate sources, we know that people generally desire sharing  medical asset information more freely than they do other kinds of data, but we need to outline strategies for obtaining data regardless- and compiling it into our product in a way that improves its accessibility compared to the way it is accessed right now. In the future it would probably be more helpful to partner with the holders of this information directly to upload it onto our source, but again we need to decide how to approach that strategically and consider if it might be possible to generate revenue from this.

Interview #1: Jennifer, Company Physician (New User)

• Jennifer graduated from SOCM in 2016 and has a medical degree from Vanderbilt University. She is currently working with Thai medics on a joint combined training exercise in Asia.
• Thoughts on acquiring users:
  • Suggests looking into consumer market for inspiration. How did Uber or Lyft or Tinder handle location services.
  • Concerned about the compliance/legal components to the app
  • Some degree of uncertainty with the app being used with untrained users. What could go wrong if used improperly?
• Fan of the concept but cautious on the widespread adoption. Considers the app useful for most medics who are willing to adopt more tech in their regimen

Interview #2: Josh, 18D (SOCM instructor) transitioned from Navy SWCC (Repeat)

• Josh has deep knowledge into the medic training schema as a SOCM instructor. He works with the foreign medics to train them on US standards.
• Thoughts on cost/resources:
  • Interested in seeing if data sources can be linked to NCBI or NIH pipeline to integrate with existing data
  • Wondering if incentivizing current vendors of 18Ds would be beneficial. Palantir is a good example of a vendor that has done it right. Partnership opportunity here.
• Hesitant to say he would believe the data without understanding a clear system of validation and quality metrics instilled that feeds back to US establishments.

Interview #3: Karl, Implementation Architect, Raytheon (Tech Expert)

• Karl is currently with Raytheon working with the small liabilities innovations group that funds small pilots for the military in ad-hoc projects.
• Thoughts on overall strategy:
  • Are there health plans or provider groups that have established systems that are willing to donate data? Suggested Kaiser Permanente as an example.
  • Concerned with issues when crowdsourcing goes wrong. Likes the concept to keep costs low but what if it goes unregulated? Could lead to massive litigation downstream
  • Would want a feature that allows one to “bookmark” certain assets that are working right or have high satisfaction ratings
• Suggests running a focus group to test the functions and really focus on “breaking” the app to anticipate potential weaknesses proactively.

Interview #4: Jon, 17 years as Special Forces Medical Sergeant and now instructor of 18D/SOIDC refresher course (Repeat)

• Can you show me how the search capability would work? Right now, I can search an area for medical assets, but can I actually search through the feedback?
• Even for deployment within the military you may need to think about some kind of knowledge management system
  • Mentioned the user profile rewards, but who would you have kind of verifying the data as you go along?
  • For starting out on the military side, would recommend just building out from the open-source information that we already use like the CDC sources
    • to provide proof of concept in this way rather than in the commercial way you need to have information on it- relying on 18D’s would take too long for small deployment

Interview #5: Xiuyuan Hao, Surgeon of international aid team in Morocco (Repeated)

• Compared with assessments made by medical faculties, the assessments made by patients (public users) are less reliable and accurate
• It’s important to make this app usable to the doctors who make the assessments.
• How to deal with the conflict assessment could be the next step.

Interview #6: Sam,

• The medical asset info is something that needs to be verified by military personnel
  • There should be an icon that shows verification by the military (other verification itself might not be considered trustworthy for our standards)
• Would like to see what the user component would look like

Interview #7: Kirk, Former 18D/JSOC Regional Team Lead

• To leverage user profiles, definitely continue using the game aspect to verify these medical assessments
  • You can allow options of contact information (like Craigslist email) if it is just for the military use case
• You may need someone monitoring the feature-based asset search because the features that matter might change every so often
  • Especially for the information on there that is crowdsourced because you want it to be the most accurate and helpful it can be
  • Standardizing the level of information that is provided (across crowdsourced and across the NGO sources) would be a step up from current sources like Lonely Planet
• Most NGOs will be open to partnerships that help spread medical information like the WHO
  • It’s a platform that will help them too
  • Purely for information sharing
  • Some NGO’s *might* not be completely ok with the military flavor, like maybe Red Cross

Interview #8, Chandler, 18D, Repeat User (haven’t spoken to since the first week)

• Thought it was a “really good idea”, had some data and security concerns about the product which was understandable because we hadn’t talked to him since January.
  • He liked the idea of open source – “hide the noise”
  • Liked that it was adaptable for his personal devices
• Tried to make an ArcGIS account just so he could mess with the application

 

Interview #9, Stephen, Retired Army Surgeon (Repeat)

• Thought it was a very cool concept and liked the user interface
• He travels a lot and would like to see the hospitals in neighboring countries

Interview #10, Dave, CSM (Repeat)

• Wants there to be upload and download capabilities with low bandwidth, still be able to use the overlay features but may be more raw data
• Huge application for this with NGOs and sees more of an advantage with on the ground use
• Rethink using ArcGIS potentially work with ATAK – He’s going to connect us in order to get the ball rolling on this
• Said people seem excited about this

In our third week, the team travelled to Fort Bragg on Wednesday, January 23rd. There we saw all of the equipment that medics have to take inventory for but really don’t use. In general, the equipment medics do take on missions is left up to them and what they believe the team needs. In addition, we went through a quick 30 minute training session in how medics treat a patient after a casualty occurs using the MARCH acronym. M stands for mass hemorrhaging; A for airway; R for respiratory; C for circulation; and H for hypothermia and head injury. After this crash course, we were quickly put into basic gear (a helmet and chest pad) and told that we were going through a training scenario. We were able to use the knowledge from the quick class and turn it around into a real life scenario. The 18D and 18A must work together to coordinate evacuation scenarios and treatment while also securing the perimeter. It made our team realize how stressful these situations can be for medics and how much they are responsible for. In light of this, we want to take the load off the medics in a way that eases the burden of all they have to do. Our new MVP for next week will focus on relieving some of the stress and burden of multitasking, and possibly looking to pivot towards improving availability of information for medical evacuation decision making.

 

Interview 1: CPT Holly

• She talked about the importance of team cohesiveness and  how she interacts with medics, particularly during cross training
• She mentioned that there is no baseline for equipment and the importance of including medical assets when going on a mission

 

Interview 2: 18D Chris

• He responded to our checklist app and clinic model idea and said it would be hard to make it personalized because every mission and location is so different but would be beneficial
• He talked about how difficult it is to figure out logistics and arrangements of med evacs including describing a PACE plan

 

Interview 3: CSM Dave

• He talked about the limitations of equipment, space competition, austere environments and how situational dependent each deployment is
• He added suggestions to a potential app, wanted a foolproof way to catalogue care and treatment, and spoke about how important a database could be of medical facilities

 

Interview 4: CPT Joe

• From the captain’s perspective, operational readiness rests on having a clinic setup and wouldn’t be able to start a mission without doing that (leads into overall DoD mission)
• Whatever is developed could be helpful if it could cross language barriers because of working with partner forces

 

Interview 5: 18D Chandler

• What he actually takes on a mission is up to him and he’s used his own Government Purchasing Card to get equipment he believes is useful (not something SF thinks/knows is necessary)
• Point of injury care is something medics are well practiced in which is what training focuses on and often gets used in incidence number

 

Interview 6: Kevin – SOFACC

• He says that reliance on technology can’t happen because SF is trying to have greater levels of strategic success so once SF leaves, they won’t give technologies away
• Really want to focus on lasting solutions and finding a next level of care which may not necessarily be a doctor
• Medical knowledge doesn’t have to be secure and gave us information on where to find unclassified information

 

Interview 7: Eric – SOFACC

• Make their students develop their own solutions so they can teach them how to innovate in environments they’re unfamiliar in
• They believe that the best information and resources for 18Ds are other 18Ds

 

Interview 8: Medical Director of SOFACC David

• PFC is mimicked in SOFACC training by having trainees take patients across North Carolina for a few days and having them think on the fly
• Talked about the importance of developing local relationships on missions

 

Interview 9: Winnie, SOFACC Trainer

• Goal of SOFACC training is to get as much basic knowledge taught as possible to perform care for 5-10 hours
• Getting that EMT certification allows SOFACCs to jump a lot of hurdles in acquiring medication/aid from bureaucratic agencies/local pharmacies

 

Interview 10: Sergeant Jim (SOFACC Trainee)

• Certain materials in SOFACC training won’t be present on the field usually like the backboard litter (meant for spinal injuries)
  • The resources come with evacuation chopper/plane – not helpful in the moment for men on the ground
• Certain SOFACC training modules are more realistic than others in representing battle field operations, important to imitate the pressure/lack of resources in the real environment