Claire: You're watching the Microsoft US Health and Life Sciences Confessions of Health Geeks podcast. A show that offers industry insight from the health geeks and data freaks of the US Health and Life Sciences industry team. I'm your host, Claire Bonaci. Welcome to this episode of YOTNM series focused on community engagement and the impact of nurses in their communities.
Welcome Kathleen, Tracy and special guest Keola to the confessions of health Geeks podcast.
Tracy: Thank you,
Kathleen: Thank you.
Claire: So let's get started. So Tracy, you are the Accessibility lead for the USHLS industry and I know you have a few announcements for us. Can you explain what they are?
Tracy: Yes, May is actually quite busy. We start off with May as nurses month as the greater part of Year of the Nurse and Midwife 2020. It's also mental health Awareness Month. On May 21st we have GAD, which is the Global Accessibility Awareness Day. That's the 9th anniversary and then to round out May we actually have the 10th anniversary of Microsoft's Ability summit this year. It is going to be virtual, but it's going to be 2 half day. So Wednesday, May 27 and Thursday, May 28th. The Ability summit brings together people with disabilities, allies and accessibility professionals to really imagine and define the future of disability inclusion and accessibility. And when we look at accessibility from the perspective of healthcare, really we see that we have a great need to build out our communities to create innovative technology that impacts everybody. And when we look at our communities, we look at it's not just the clinician and patient but also the families and the caregivers and the technologists all coming together into this community to create community engagement. Because that's how we drive to really innovative technologies and these technologies that are being created are amazing. So I think at the heart of Ability summit is that community engagement and innovation.
Claire: Thanks so much Tracy, for bringing that up. Actually, I was lucky enough to attend the Ability summit last year with you and it really is an amazing event. It's just a lot of energy and a lot of great announcements as well. And that brings up a good point that fits very well with nurses month and community engagement. So Keola, you have a unique story to tell on the impact technology has had on your life. Do you mind sharing?
Keola: Yeah, sure, thank you. I'm looking forward to that ability summit to Tracy. Actually, probably talk to you a little bit later on about that. So thank you for sharing. Currently I'm a user researcher here at Microsoft, but actually I started out in health care as a clinical trials researcher. And I worked with people who have spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury. After that I actually then went into oncology clinical trials, so it was pretty much pure health care. But then I made a jump into technology. And I joined a company where we were creating wearable devices for people who
are visually impaired to help them navigate their indoor surroundings. And we were also creating robots to help people at home who were quadriplegic and at that point that's actually where things change. Life took a different turn. You see throughout this time my father was the primary caretaker for my stepmother who had ALS. And by that she was actually also a registered nurse. She was an RN and it was hard because at this time the disease had progressed to the point where she was quadriplegic and she was confined to her bed for a couple years now and it was very hard 'cause she could still sense and feel pain and discomfort while she was in bed and to try to alleviate that and to prevent bed sores and things like that she had to change her position every hour or so and my father would be responsible for doing that. And so at that point, he really asked me since I was at this company that was doing a lot of like you know, healthcare, technology and devices. He asked if I could actually create an eye controlled hospital bed. So my step mom could adjust the position of her bed on her own 'cause she was a very fiercely independent person before ALS as you can imagine, an RN, very tough, tough people and to give her back that at least one level of Freedom. Again what it would have been great for her. Yeah, and so I said yes. Of course. I can't say no to across the request like that. So I tried but the company I was at the time I didn't have the resources and that's when I moved to Microsoft and it was there at Microsoft where I heard about the annual hackathon project and I thought that would be perfect opportunity to make that this dream kind of come true and happen. And that's really the start of it. The stars aligned and I was able to assemble and lead a team of over 20 very talented engineers and designers and researchers for the hackathon that also had a personal vested interest in creating a system like that. It was amazing story. After getting to know each one of them hearing why they were part of this team and what drew them to it. I mean it was it was very heartwarming. But that's for a different story too. But we were able to do it. Long story short in about 5 grueling days we were able to create a system that would transform a standard hospital bed in to one that could be controlled simply by the patient in the bed using their eye gaze to control the position of the bed itself. And we did really well that year at the hackathon. Sadly, my stepmother passed away before we could show her that the project. But still, you know, continue on anyway. In her memory, and it did well. Well, I was really proud and happy to see something like that comes to fruition, but it was only the start.
Claire: So that really is an amazing story. And that's actually where you met Kathleen. So do you mind telling us a little bit about the impact Kathleen, as a nurse had to that hackathon?
Keola: Oh yeah, certainly. So as mentioned before, we did a great job that first year and we were trying to partner with some of the local ALS groups to try to get this technology out there. I did. We did well that we wanted to continue on the following year. So the second year came about. The hackathon was there. I put together the team again and we're leading phase two. Well, we had a lot of insights from our own previous experiences and research with patients having Kathleen and her experiences as a health professional really helped to validate and improve our system. Basically that second year we were restricted in time again and access to who we could actually test the system with. Of course there's a lot of regulations and things like that and safety measures we didn't have the ability to do multiple iterative testing with actual patients so Kathleen was great because she was basically our subject matter expert at the time and so her insights, her experience, you know, was really able to help us make sure we were building the thing right and she went through it as a subject matter expert again and called out things that could be improved and validated. The things that were correct and she also added some insights to really make this more inclusive. Two in particular, one of the aspects that we were having some challenges with was this hardware mounting platform. And as you know, Microsoft were a software company for not such a hardware company, but she was really brought to the to our attention that we had to make this more inclusive based on a particular disease progression. The way the alignment of the user and the way that it was it was mounted had to be more adjustable and things like that. So that's much detail. Though we created some designs, we kept Kathleen constantly in contact with her while she was part of the team. And we made the improvements to the system. So at the end of the phase two or second year of the hackathon, the system is so much better. And all thanks to Kathleen's contributions and insights, and I think that is one of the most important things on why it's so important to have health care professionals on the frontline be working together with technologists to help improve this because it's hard, you know, we are in some sense working in a vacuum when we build these things. An interesting like that is quite literally my job as a user researcher is trying to get out of the vacuum and bring the appropriate people into context. If I cannot speak with people who are the actual users, next best thing are subject matter experts as like people like Kathleen. So you know if people have insights. If people have these experiences because they're there. The ones on the front lines, you know it is so crucial to hear them and hear their voice. and I just encourage anyone. If they had the opportunity to share that with someone who's building something like Microsoft Teams to definitely do that.
Claire: So that's an amazing story. And Kathleen and you were instrumental in bringing a clinician's point of view to the hackathon. And we also know that the particular hack that you mentioned was third place internationally and 1st place locally. So congrats again and clearly nurses need to be on the forefront of these technologies so that they work for both the patient and the clinician. So, Kathleen, what message would you want nurses to hear on the impact that they could have on technological advancements today?
Kathleen: So thanks for that Keola. I appreciate those kind words. So actually I was a Microsoft boomerang and I was newly back to the company and I was really just interested in getting connected and exposed other groups within Microsoft and also, I’m a remote employee. So I did everything remotely so it does prove that you can participate in hackathons virtually and when I review the different hack opportunities I kind of saw this one that had a goal of making life better for people with ALS. I think that was your main goal, Keola. When I look through it and my background, my nursing background, trauma, critical care. My hospital was a head and spinal cord center for our region. I've taken care of many patients with disabilities including paraplegia and quadriplegia. So I thought maybe
my clinical expertise would be a value, so I reached out to Keola. He was very welcoming and he added me to the team. The team was fabulous to work with. I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun. I think that a lot of nurses we have so much experience that and we also have some great ideas where we really can be additive to systems engineering and designing. If nurses are included. I think they can really contribute to the technology and they can be a real value. So really nurses can make invaluable contributions. They can bring a lot to the discussions. Nurses also benefit when they contribute on working with new technology, so I got as much out of it, I think is hopefully I contributed.
Claire: Great. Well thank you so much for explaining that. And thank you again, Kathleen, Tracy and Keola for being on the podcast and for this valuable and unique insights. Thank you all for watching. please feel free to leave us questions or comments below and check back soon for more content from The HLS Industry team
