Shock to the system…..Jacob P.Koshy
The Stanford Biodesign Programme throws doctors, engineers and designers into the thick of India’s chaotic healthcare system and converts them into entrepreneurs who can understand its needs and find solutions.
E very year, sometime during the June-September monsoon season, a bunch of engineers and de- signers, fresh from a stimulat- ing six months at Stanford Uni- versity in California, step into one of India’s most chaotic, yet hallowed medical establish- ments–the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
Over the next year, after hun- dreds of visits to wards, opera- tion theatres, lecture halls, ac- cident sites and consulting rooms, these aspirant medical craftsmen progress from shock, amazement and under- standing to gain insight into India’s rather complex health- care needs.
During the first year, the state of the wards, the smell and the general inefficiency with which people were han- dled as new patients was sim- ply overwhelming. I couldn’t help thinking that there had to be a better way to manage them, said Amit Sharma, among the first entrepreneurs to have trained on the Stanford Biodesign Programme in In- dia.