Community-Based Immersion for Health Technology Innovators: Providing a Broader Perspective for Unmet Needs and Enriching the Contextual Appreciation of Unmet Health-Related Needs

Challenge: Immersion is a key part of the need-finding process for health technology innovators in design-oriented programs/courses. Historically, immersion has mainly been conducted in hospital and other clinical settings, which unintentionally resulted in a bias toward solving unmet needs for populations that access these care environments. Novel initiative: To expose learners to a greater spectrum of unmet needs, we conducted a pilot in our full-time fellowship that broadened the immersion experience beyond clinical facilities to community organizations where they could interact with more diverse populations, identify unmet needs that may not be seen in hospitals and clinics, and better understand the effect of social determinants of health. The fellows were given deliberate preparation for this new immersion experience and then conducted nearly one week of community-based needs finding. Reflection: We informally assessed the pilot’s impact using survey data and qualitative feedback to understand changes in attitudes and perceptions, as well as the types of unmet needs sourced for projects. The pilot demonstrated value in broadening perspectives on the kinds of unmet needs that exist in the local community and helping fellows contextualize needs and information about the social determinants of health. These early results suggest that community immersion is an enriching addition to traditional clinical immersion.