Idea: I will work with healthcare providers in Ecuador to improve the quality of prenatal care in this South American country. I may help provide care to patients, perhaps even help to deliver babies, and participate in an online network of US-based volunteers to provide assistance with the set-up or selection of IT enhancements to the infrastructure in these communities.
Plan & Itinerary: I will visit rural, urban and suburban healthcare facilities. Duration: ~12 days with time for travel, orientation, and fun.
I’ve found a network of prenatal care facilities through a colleague associated with CLAP - The Committee for Latin American Perinatology (yes – it’s real - CLAP isn’t vernacular for Gonorrhea in Spanish!) They will assist logistics in the coordination of my visit – both with helping me to better understand how care is provided here – and to help frame thoughts and plans for the careful, creative adoption of Information Technology.
I will do this because it fits perfectly with my primary personal and professional goal for the past decade: To fix healthcare with creative, careful innovation. This proposal goes beyond my “comfort zone” in a way that will challenge me more than nearly all of my previous life experiences. To be an adventure – it should be a true challenge.
Innovation: to solve real problems in a new creative way. Connecting providers with the information they need is the best way to help them maintain the highest standards of care, allowing them put more time and energy into building personal connections with their patients. We will need to find creative, unique ways to connect providers with the information they need in a resource-poor setting. Is our Prenatal application a viable solution to one or more of their problems? Is text messaging? iPhones? Is there another solution? I will leave the hubris at home, and approach this adventure knowing that I have the tools, resources, a track record of success, and the ingenuity to figure it out with my hosts – not for them. In this way – innovation is the virus we spread to others, not something we do by ourselves so that we look smart.
Growth: moving beyond where we are now – breaking through the boundaries. (The boundaries that we see – and more importantly – those that we don’t see). Through growth – we build new knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will provide greater resources we can use to enhance the lives of others. As a voracious learner – I yearn to better understand how other cultures provide care and how they see IT as a component of the work clinicians do. What can they teach us? What can we teach them? With humility and generosity, I will work with these communities to solve problems in a new creative way. All participants are challenged and have the opportunity to grow and learn through this process.
Fun. As a team of Harvard researchers recently confirmed, happiness is contagious. For our work to be meaningful and sustainable, it needs to be fun. This adventure will be fun for me – and for the hundreds of others who will engage – not just as readers, but as active participants – through the blog/twitter/Flickr/YourTube/GPS locator “mashup” (http://www.JMRadventure.com). I will be accompanied by my 19 year old daughter Molly – who is taking a term off from her studies at the University of Chicago. Molly will also post updates to the adventure website – sharing the perspectives of a 19 year old college student on South American prenatal care, her experiences in Ecuador, and of course the connections (if she sees any) to the role of technology in connecting these dots. So while Molly’s horizons will be forever broadened by the experience – the reason she’s an imperative addition is that she’ll enforce the requirement for fun. Regardless of their age – our children always remind us of what’s most important.
And that’s where the project comes full-circle. As we improve prenatal care, engage others in learning the needs of third-world healthcare providers, and how IT can be leveraged to help – even if it’s only an incremental improvement – perhaps that tiny bit will improve the outcome of one pregnancy – and one more parent will share such a learning experience with their 19 year old daughter some day.