System Design - Health care
Nanma: Designing a pain management ecosystem for Palliative Care in India
Project type
B.Des classroom project
Year
202o
The problem.
It is definitely the need of the hour for people to get the health access that they deserve. Wherein, money wouldn’t be the sole factor affecting it. Along with quality healthcare that covers their physical well being, the patient’s as well as the caregivers mental health also needs tending to. There needs to be a support system in place for people battling life and the ones that are there with them throughout the process.
Why is this a problem?
With the rising aged population and cancer patients in India, palliative care is relevent now more than ever. It needs to be more accessible and efficient in pain management. Patients are helpless in these situations and their own opinion on the treatments they want to go through is muffled.
Lack of access
Long, painful journey
Mechanical approach
Stigma attached
Research insights from interviews
Ironically enough, patients are often not a part of major decisions with regards to their treatment courses. They wish to spend more time with their loved ones but most of it is spentbattling pain as symptoms to their predicaments.
What is good in the current system?
A lot of the cases are driven by a strong sense of family belonging and community welfare.
Amendments made with regards to drug policies
States like TN, Karnataka, Kerala have had relaxations made in terms of drug policies governing procuring opioids and Morphine.
A lot of the cases are driven by a strong sense of family belonging and community welfare.
Its free of cost for the poor and basically anyone suffering
Thanks to Self funded and community based models, PC has been in most establishments free of cost and require little to no documents.
Patient first approach as opposed to disease first clinical model.
What needs work in the current system?
Death as a taboo in India making it especially difficult in the approach of PC.
Fear of drug addiction and derailing through taking pain medication is a social stigma that hampers the PC.
The journey itself to a PC is long and tiring. Often times too little too late.
Lack of awareness of diseases like deeming cancer to be a communicable disease. This leads rise to more abandonment and psychosocial issues that the patient has to go through.
Doctors lacking compassion while dealing with patients.
Understanding the roles of Stakeholders
Design Brief
To get palliative care patients the care they need, make their voices heard and to effectively address their pain management, making their journey a seamless one
Primarily, the user is the patient, but the ecosystem would ideally bleed into the Caregivers and Providers personas as well to render a wholistic care system
Nanma
Nanma is a cohesive care assistant that helps in expressing the degree of pain, be it physical or mental and get tending to it with immediate effect
/Nanmai/
Originally from Tamil, meaning the virtue of goodness, benefit or well
What difference does Nanma make?
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It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
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It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
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It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
What Nanma does
Nanma is a cohesive ecosystem including interfaces of a wearable, mobile devices and desktops. It studies pain patterns and intimates providers to stratergise pain management better.
Low fidelity wire framing
User persona and journey
Fatima, 59
“I wish to spend the little time I have left with my family but most of my time is spent in my treatment. I just want to be pain-free”
