So, I'm going to shift gears to Ebola and in Ebola,

as I think everybody well knows and has been following in the press.

The major epidemic that we've been dealing with over the last year.

So we were pulled into this last fall and

we were starting to hear stories about this.

I think anyone who was following the news.

Everybody was hearing stories about the suits that the healthcare workers wear.

They get dangerously hot and so, you have all of this cumbersome gear.

You have to cover up every inch of your body, so no skin is exposed.

Takes a long time to put that on.

It's really not well made for these hot, humid environments and so,

they get into these Into the hot zones.

They've got these goggles on here, that they have very limited visibility and

so, if you're the patient this is really all you see.

And their core temperature starts to rise.

Sweat starts pouring down their bodies.

We heard from healthcare workers that by the time they get out of those suits,

they pull off their boots.

They dump them upside down and sweat pours out.

So these are,

your core temperature's rising to a point where it's truly dangerous.

So they can only stay in these Ebola treatment units,

as what they're called, for about 45 minutes to an hour.

So if you're trying to take care of a lot of patients and

you have limited health care workers.

And you can only go in a couple times a day for

a pretty short clip, that's a problem.

And then that visibility with those goggles fogging up,

it's pretty hard to provide quality care.

And then finally, taking off that suit.

That's the point where your sort of greatest risk for

possible infection and so, that was clearly an area for innovation.

But as we look deeper, we looked at there's need for

diagnostics at the point of care.

The need for better healthcare worker tools.

Even the most basic tools we would take for granted, didn't work in this setting.

Imagine using a stethoscope when you've got this over your head and

then, even behavior change.

When we work in global health, behavior change is a key issue.

But behavior change, kind of recognizing that Ebola is real in these communities.

Having people understand when and where to seek care.

How to protect themselves and their families.

All of these were areas for innovation, so we launched a grand challenge.

It was a tool we had, knew we could use well, so

we launch the grand challenge in two weeks.

Turned on a dime to be able to do that and put it out to the world and

this was kind of an all hands on deck.

Called engineers and students and

scientista and all.

Anybody who can gauge and bring their thinking and

expertise to hep us solve these challenges.

And so with that, we really looked at multiple ways of engaging people.

We iterated on the grand challenge model.

We built in a crowd sourcing component, which we hadn't done before.

Where we partnered with open IDO and used their open innovation platform.

From where anybody could post their idea and get feedback on their idea and

what it did was, actually created a conversation.

Got people thinking creatively, got people engaged.

Got people who otherwise wouldn't of thought about this.

To start looking and say hey, I have something that might work here and

it even created teams of people.

Because as people started saying, all right,

my idea is kind of similar to yours.

Or if I add my idea to your idea,we could actually do something together.

And teams of people formed in ways

that they otherwise wouldn't have found each other.

Because one was in San Francisco and one was in Armenia and

somebody else was half way further across the world.

So, that it brought together teams in some creative ways and

in something that I think as we go forward.

We can continue to think about how to tap that, so it perhaps,

leads to more stronger ideas.

But, through this.

This is that kind of timer.

This isn't, so second piece is we had a competition

to be able to fund ideas that needed further development and testing.

Then we also recognized the collaboration of partnership.

It's going to be so critical to moving these ideas forward, so

we ended up with over fifteen hundred ideas through this process.

And we certainly exceeded the numbers we've ever had for a grand challenge.

And one of the really cool things was, that it sparked more than a dozen

workshops all over the country, some in Europe.

With universities like Duke,

pulling together people, pulling together groups of like minds.

To be able to think about how to solve these challenges and through that,

a number of really interesting ideas emerged.

And I have to say,

as an aside those groups that ended up coming up with some of the best ideas.

Were the ones that brought in a really good mix of players.

But had the users who were there to say, here are the challenges we're facing.

No, you can't provide just a big vent in the back,

because if you bend over someone will vomit on your head, dont sorry.

>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] And

you know that's a risk of contamination.

So that kind of immediate user feedback is really valuable and

we saw that reflected in the quality of ideas.

So we ended up funding 15 different solutions so far.

They cut across a number of different areas.

From reimagining the healthcare worker's suit.

New healthcare worker tools.

Different cooling solutions.

These are a lot of off the shelf ideas of cooling vests used by

race car drivers now.

That you could actually combine with a suit and

cool a healthcare worker pretty quickly, keep their core temperature down.

Beauty of a grand challenge is,

that because we didn't just say we design a suit.

We said we need to be able to help keep the healthcare worker safe, so

they can provide better care.

So, Makerere University from Uganda's actually trying to rethink about how to

reimagine that healthcare setting.

To redesign the tent, so the tent and the environment can be cooler,

rather than just cooling the suit.

And then we have behavior change, ICT, decontanimants.

This is actually and it'll,

kind of like a human car wash, where you actually just walk in.

And it will decontaminate you rather than standing and

getting sprayed down with chlorine.

And this actually would allow

you to decontaminate things coming out, like tablets.

You can't even take paper out of these ETUs,

everything's got to either be incinerated or dunked in chlorine wash.

So I'm just going to pull up, just because I want to show you the Ebola suit.

This Ebola suit's gotten a lot of attention and it's kind of cool.

So this is just a one minute video, and this came out of Johns Hopkins University.

You can see they came up with anti-fogging systems so the mask won't fog up.

They also have much bigger visibility.

They had glove liners.

They had a two color suit, so you can see which is the exposed side and

the non exposed side.

They've got baffles at the openings and a curl away zipper,

which you're going to see in a second which is very cool.

They've got a cooling system that they're building in,

to try to cool the healthcare worker.

That actually would the provide some air in others.

Wicking Base Layer, they were working with a sports wear company on that.

And this is the Break Away Pull Tabs and

this goin gto help with the simplified doffing process.

They're taking steps from about 24 to 30 steps down to eight.

So they take this breakaway zipper,

kind of like what you might find on a wetsuit and it just pulls away.

And so it opens up, and then, they've got these pull tabs on the arms, so

you can bend over and step on them.

And the you basically just curl out of the suit

as if you were coming out of a chrysalis.

And then it comes down to your feet, and

then you have these inner gloves that stay on and help you get the rest of it off.

Anyway, this suit's gotten a lot of attention.

One of the things that, one of the reasons why it's getting picked up by the press

is, they actually had a wedding dress designer.

Who was part of that group of unlike minds that came in and so,

they've even been at New York fashion week.

So anyway and actually, I'll show you one more thing really fast and

that is, this is another innovation that came through.

This is a wearable sensor,

the latest in cutting edge technology, cutting edge wearables.

And it's a sensor, it attaches to the sternum and

it will track all of your key patient vitals from heart rate, respiratory rate.

Temperature, oxygen saturation,

blood pressure, all in this little, it's actually called a smart band-aid.

It's very flexible and it will be bluetooth enabled so

you can track all of these things remotely.

Outside of the hot zone and have 24 continuous monitoring.

So, it really could be a game changer.

So, just quickly moving on, and step back and look in a lot of our innovations.

One of the things we noticeed is that and

this is reflecting back to say they might support innovators is.

It is number of our innovators, even our vast ones

needed a lot of help, thinking through some of the issues.

That are going to make them successful, particularly around scaling and so,

a few ideas here.

So pathways to scale.

Really understanding what are your pathways to scale.

How can you actually get your innovation and make it successful?

What does that look like?

And innovators are really good at thinking about.

How am I going to make my solution my technology work and

don't always work on that other pieces.

Strategic and introduction planning kind of tied to this.

Really thinking through the business plan creation,

developing the right value proposition.

Designing the right growth strategies,

not all innovators come with that kind of mind set.

And an important skill sets to have to bring in.

Evaluating market opportunities.

Really understanding who is your target market.

How do you segment that market in the right way, aligned to market realities?

Then there's just basic organizational capacity, kind of HR staff.

How do you have the right people, right skill sets?

How do you retain them?

Then accessing funding is a bit of a challenge and particularly,

as your going along.

And we're struggling with this even now, of really,

the seed programs helping us think this through too.

How do you obtain funding?

How do you obtain the right funding at the right time?

You make the wrong decisions.

You may think okay, I can get, someone's offering me convertible debt now.

I'm going to take that debt.

Well that may hurt you down the road, if that's not the right approach for you.

So, some of these decisions are really important and then of course, partnering.

And it's collaborating with partners, it may be NGO partners,

it may be finding the right manufacturing partner.

Grand Challenges Case Study: Ebola

Innovation and Design for Global Grand Challenges

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