I am Andreas

I am a medical doctor with a Ph.D. and a diverse background encompassing several specialties, including emergency medicine, psychiatry, otolaryngology, and general practice. My primary motivation as a medical doctor has always been to help people in need and make a meaningful difference in their lives. Throughout my career I realised, that while direct patient care is profoundly rewarding it is also constrained by time, resources, and systemic inefficiencies. These limitations restrict the number of patients I can assist on a daily basis.

This realization sparked my interest in innovation and design thinking as a way to address broader healthcare challenges. By developing new solutions, technologies, or processes, I can potentially impact thousands, if not millions, of lives.

What’s in it for me?

BioMedical Design offers a unique opportunity to bridge my clinical expertise with innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration, allowing me to create solutions that can transform healthcare delivery and leave a lasting legacy.

I applied to this program because I believe it equips participants with the tools, methodologies, and network needed, to drive meaningful change.

The positive side of being a passive observer

Coming from a clinical background where immediate decision-making and active intervention are the norms, it was initially a challenge to step back and adopt the role of an observer. My instinct as a medical professional is always to help, to fix, and to act. However, this observational role offered a rare and invaluable opportunity to gain a more comprehensive and objective understanding of the hospital environment.

By watching processes unfold, I was able to see patterns, inefficiencies, and interactions that aren’t always apparent, when you’re focused on solving individual cases. Instead of reacting to situations, I found myself asking deeper questions such as, “Why is this done this way?” and “Is there a better, more efficient, or safer way, to achieve this?” This shift in perspective enabled me to identify potential areas for improvement that might otherwise be overlooked during routine clinical work. It was an enlightening experience that helped me appreciate the power of stepping back, observing critically, and identifying opportunities, for systemic change.

Seeing things from a different angle

Before this experience, my understanding of hospital workflows was largely shaped by my own role as a clinician. Shadowing staff in various roles — from nurses, doctors and technicians to administrative personnel— gave me a much richer and more nuanced perspective on how the ward operates. I came to appreciate the complexity and interdependence of different tasks and roles within the hospital ecosystem.

A shared understanding helps

What struck me most was how each profession has its own set of responsibilities, challenges, and workflows, which are often not fully visible to others. This lack of transparency can sometimes lead to misunderstandings or inefficiencies. When we visualized these processes through diagrams and shared them with the staff, many were surprised by the insights gained. It helped create a shared understanding and highlighted opportunities for improved collaboration and communication. This experience underscored the importance of seeing healthcare delivery as a team effort where every role is vital to the overall functioning of the ward.

During our two months of observation in the cardiology and endocrinology departments, we documented several hundred observations and issues. These ranged from seemingly minor inconveniences to more significant systemic challenges. Some of these issues were specific to the specialties we observed, while others reflected broader problems seen across healthcare settings, such as workflow inefficiencies, communication gaps, and patient safety concerns.

A need is an opportunity to improve

From these observations, we identified close to 100 specific healthcare needs. These needs encompass a wide range of areas, including patient care quality, workflow optimization, resource management, and challenges faced by healthcare providers. Each identified need represents an opportunity for improvement and innovation. Our goal is to systematically analyze and prioritize these needs based on their impact and feasibility, ensuring that we address the most pressing and transformative opportunities.

Moving forward, we are currently focused on addressing a specific, local need within the host department while simultaneously validating and refining the other identified needs. By engaging with healthcare professionals and stakeholders, we aim to better understand the underlying causes and potential solutions for each challenge.

Killing our darlings

By week 5, we plan to narrow our list down to 2-3 validated needs that show the greatest potential for impact. This validation process involves conducting interviews, analyzing data, and ensuring that the needs we focus on are both significant and solvable. Once we finalize these top needs, we will move into the next phase: selecting one need to develop into a viable solution. This will involve brainstorming, prototyping, and testing potential solutions to ensure they are both effective and implementable within real healthcare settings.

The most profound experience in my learning journey has been witnessing the power and potential of interdisciplinary collaboration. In clinical practice, healthcare professionals often work within their specialized silos. In the BioMedical Design program, I have had the opportunity to work closely with experts from diverse fields, such as engineering, design, business, and technology.

This collaboration has shown me that combining different perspectives, skills, and ways of thinking can lead to innovative solutions that no single discipline could achieve on its own. For example, a clinical problem that might seem insurmountable can be approached in a completely new way when viewed through the lens of an engineer or designer. This cross-disciplinary approach has deepened my appreciation for teamwork and highlighted how innovation thrives at the intersection of different fields. I’m eager to continue leveraging these collaborative experiences to create impactful healthcare solutions.

Align and learn together 

Our team consisted of Søren who is a medical doctor with experience in different specialities and Tine who is a researcher with a background in biomedical engineering. As the programme is intense and you have to work closely in the teams, we put a lot of effort in aligning and understanding each other’s expectations from the beginning. It has been interesting to work closely with one person where you need to compromise and find common interests for the project to be equally motivated. As a team you learn both individually and together and are pushed to explore barriers and corners outside your comfort zones.   

Speaking a common language

Even though we have two different backgrounds in our team, we quickly realized that our “language” was quite similar due to Tine’s interest and working experience in the clinical environment and Søren’s interest in the technical elements of hospital equipment. As we were not so different in our knowledge and working habits, the teamwork seemed to develop relatively effortlessly. In a team of two persons the interdisciplinarity is limited and thus, we took the opportunity to seek interdisciplinary inputs to a larger extent among our co-fellows and through the massive BMD-network.  

Identifying needs

We have been in the clinic to do observations and to find needs. This was an individual process where all fellows brought their observations into the team. This included both different observations and overlapping observations, which led to clarifying discussions in the team. The team process of narrowing down all the identified needs was dependent on many elements including interests, competences and ambition levels.  

Creative, crazy and cool ideas  

Iterating for a suited solution 

We work with a high risk/high reward project and it is always interesting to talk to different people even with the same professional background as they identify the risks associated with the project differently. The unmet need we try to address has been difficult to attack until we tried flipping it and asked what THIS solution could do compared to state of the art.  

There have been ups and downs during the project. The learning curve has been steep and it has been challenging to make the right strategies. Right now we work on de-risking specific areas of the project and we attempt to acquire funding to proceed. We feel obligated to try to find out if our solution can be a candidate solution to this important unsolved problem. 

While I am not experienced with tech-things like 3D-printing, digital prototyping or electronic devices, I am certainly always up for a challenge. I love learning new skills and for this reason, I was particularly excited about the prototyping workshops, we had as part of the Creative Skills Phase.

My background is nursing but…

I want to challenge status quo

I applied for the BioMedical Design programme because I sought to broaden my horizons and challenge myself professionally. In my job, I felt I was beginning to increasingly accept bad or mediocre solutions because of the narrative “that’s just how it is”.
I want to continuously be able to challenge the status quo and therefore the BMD programme felt like a perfect match for me. Learning about design thinking and improving my skills as a facilitator have been some of my favourite parts of the programme so far, and these are skills I will be able to use in my future career, whatever it may bring.

Going on a learning journey

On March 10^th, 2022, my teammate Gülçin and I took a train from Aarhus Central station at 5.55 am. We had a long day ahead of us. We were scheduled to visit the Danish Technical University (DTU) in Lyngby and spend the entire day being introduced to the Aduino platform. At DTU we met Jacob Pedersen who described himself as an electronics design engineer and all round hacker. He assured us that he was used to teaching coding to kids at summer camps, and it would be easy-going.

The AHA-moment

Knowing the electronic field is good

I am still far from being a programmer, but this was such a cool introduction to an area that I had no prior knowledge about. Now I know that it is possible to do various electronic prototypes without spending significant money or time on it! We are currently experimenting with ultrasound modalities in my team, but since our concept and idea is constantly evolving, we cannot know if we will pivot into a new solution next week. Luckily, we have an electronics-engineer with experience in this field on my team, but the insight I got into coding and user design really benefits me in a way, that I too can be a part of this.

Future possibilities

We are now in the Commercial Skills Phase with the focus of further developing our solution while concomitantly looking into our Intellectual Property, business models and funding strategies. We have a lot of things to do in the next few months, and I am excited to see how far we will be with our solution by the end of the programme.

As we rang in 2021 from home, the Biomedical Design fellows also entered the creative phase – from home.

Grounded by Covid-19

But it wasn’t an easy journey. The impacts of COVID-19 were still very much felt around the globe. The situation kept evolving and we were ultimately forced to work from home. So how much play can you actually do during lockdown? Thanks to Pernille’s quick thinking and ability to adapt, she redesigned the whole curriculum to work in an online space. And from my perspective, it actually worked out for the best!

New situation – new tools

We kicked-off the creative phase by migrating to Miro, an online collaborative tool, that works pretty much like an electronic whiteboard. It was the perfect medium for doing all the fun activities lined up to exercise our creativity. We started out by unpacking the healthcare needs we had identified by working on a creative design brief. This was quickly followed by the introduction of ideation tools and techniques, with the help of Syddansk Sundhedsinnovation, Randi Lehmann (The “Crazy 8s” is one of my favourites).

Rapid prototyping

Using random materials that we could find at home, we were also trained in creating rapid prototypes for our ideas. Given a very short time limit, we were forced to be quick, resourceful, and effective in translating our imagination to something malleable. This proved fun and useful for us in coming up with solutions – ranging all the way from the silly to the promising ones.

Testing, testing, testing

Equipped with the necessary facilitation skills we were able to go out and ideate with external experts and contacts. We were also fortunate to learn from IDEO U teaching lead, Bre Przestrzelski, on the essentials in facilitating co-creative sessions. In collaboration with the Kitchen, Aarhus University’s start-up hub, Pernille prepared two ideation sessions for us to practice our facilitation skills in. Leaning into the program’s timeline, my team, composed of Camilla Waldstrøm, Mercedes Marin, and I, organised four online external ideation sessions with 20 experts from various fields. Tapping into our new learnings, we were able to successfully come up with clearer solution directions for our healthcare needs. To break out of our zoom fatigue, we would sometimes sneak out and work together in person 🙂

And even more testing

To help us see if the solution fits our users, Randi Lehmann returned to give us a workshop on scenario training. This was a very fun workshop where we had to role-play our users in an online space to uncover gaps in the solution. Pernille then invited Martin Ibsen and Peter Lindberg of Syndicate for a very insightful idea exploration and value proposition workshop to help us unwrap the value and potential of our healthcare solution ideas. Martin and Peter challenged us to test our solution hypotheses by testing out our pretotype. My team rose up to the challenge by organising a rapid test on 30 participants over 5 days. Our efforts paid off as this revealed how a small focused experiment can help set the direction of our product development. My team celebrated by sledding down a snow hill and clinking a glass or two (or three).

Structure and formality are needs-to-have after all

Of course, not everything is fun and games, throughout this phase. We were also challenged by issues and sensitivities regarding idea ownership. This was really highlighted by instances where teams working on similar topics had to ideate internally with the same group of people. For me, this emphasized the importance of confidentiality and the use of non-disclosure agreements. It also offered an opportunity for self-reflection, and allowed us to re-visit our team values.

Time for a pitch

At the end of the creative phase, we were tasked to pitch our ideas to the Biomedical Design advisory group. We were nervous, but it turned out to be such a pleasant culmination for all the hard work we have done in this phase. It allowed us to consolidate all our results and bring our ideas one step closer to becoming a start-up. Looking back at what we just went through, Pernille’s creative phase curriculum exceeded my expectations. I might not know how it is sans lockdown, but all I can say is, I wouldn’t have done it any other way.