7 weeks before I was scheduled to leave my former job and embark on my Global Health Corp Fellowship, I undertook a seemingly impossible task: to have students at my Health Sciences University, with no prior programming and/or systems design experience, design a mobile app.
But deep inside me, I knew we would never pull this off, so i went for a more strategic positioning. Build Teams have an intense 6 week program that scares them into completion via a real competition – the annual Orange Community Innovation Awards. All the time, I worried about how much hands-on mentorship I should give, enough to keep them interested and working but not so much that they would not be prepared for my pending exit.
7 Teams, 9 ideas, boiled down to 3 ideas. At submission, only 1 made it through. That was good for me. Because I had achieved a subtle goal, an idea of whether these students were ready for innovation of this scale. An understanding of the systems and forces in play, in a regular University Calendar, through which i struggled to find the right time and space.
Fast forward, the single app, not only made the finals, but it won 1st runner up! See Press Here. So not only am I proud of Daniel and Joyce, for they were the only team without any computing/programming credits, and I am equally excited at the prospects of an innovation center at my former work place.
Its the times, and a Health Sciences University – and any training institution – that is not recognizing the influence of Technology in delivering Health and Health Services in this day and age may be missing a point. My passion is nurtured at the place where Health and Technology intersect, and my inhibitions have been shattered by the first time success of 12 hours of haphazard mentorship.
Imagine what a well structured program would do. Imagine what a formally recognized club of innovators and developers would deliver. But how much more, if these are molded from the current crop of Health Sciences Students?
I am excited.