ETiCCS: Emerging technologies in cervical cancer screening
Mission
Through tight cooperation between science and industry we will implement an innovative healthcare screening approach specifically targeted at fragile infrastructures starting with cervical cancer in Kenya.
Currently, every ten minutes a woman in Africa dies a long, and painful death due to cervical cancer – but: cervical cancer is easily preventable by early and widespread screening.
A UX-driven IT approach can help to deliver on this mission.
History
Cervical cancer is caused by viral infection with HPV, an important discovery for which the Nobel prize was awarded 2008 to Prof. Harald zur Hausen, Heidelberg. In industrialized countries, screening is an essential part of women’s routine healthcare; new vaccinations against HPV for adolescent girls are available, but expensive and do not remove the need for ongoing screening. With the risk of cervical cancer being 6-20 times higher for HIV-infected women it is critical to act fast in order to also prevent dramatic impact not only on the female population but also on families and entire societies.
Project background
The initial focus point and basic setup is a one-year clinical cervical cancer study in Eldoret, Kenya that started in January 2015. The end-to-end process for the study is quite similar to a classical prevention process: a nurse examines a woman, takes a sample, sends it to a lab, receives the results and contacts her for follow-up e.g. further treatment. To implement this efficiently, the different roles have to collect and exchange data through an easy-to-use system, fitting into their very busy, challenging workday.
Activities and approach
We started the end-user research on site in Kenya to understand the daily challenges, especially of female patients and nurses. Back in Germany, Design Thinking methods were successfully applied to synthesize and wireframes were created in close collaboration with the study leads. We are members of SAP SE’s Design and Co-Innovation Center, a global in-house design team.
