In part two of this blog post, we look at how we are building evidence regarding what works and what the limitations of the project are. If you haven’t already, please read our first blog.
An important lesson to innovators that we would like to share is that the adoption of an innovation in the field might take more effort than maybe even developing the innovation itself.
Large organisations working to solve urgent problems during an emergency might have little time and resources to actually try out new products or solutions. Our suggestion is to document and gather lab and field data as a key part of the whole project. Organisations are more likely to adopt it if it has been proven to work previously in other settings.
We presented Faircap at the International Disaster Response Expo in London and at Elrha’s WASH showcase to get feedback from humanitarian experts.
One of the most common questions we are asked is: 'how do we know that the Faircap filters actually work?'
To answer this question as collaboratively and as transparently as possible we’ve invited other researchers and experts to rate Faircap based on the evidence they gather.
We focused first on sending filters to be independently tested in labs, listed below:
At the Virus Cotaminants Lab we participated in the testing process. Understanding what it took to make these kind of tests in a lab allowed us to think about finding ways to conduct similar tests in the field.
We have already received a request by a PHD researcher at the Technical University of Berlin to test Faircap and compare it to other commercially available filters. Because of this collaboration we were able to send some Faircap filters to a small hospital being built in a refugee camp in the north of Syria and we will be partnering with Oxfam to test the filters in Mozambique.
The more data we gather, and the more evidence we accumulate regarding what works and the limitations of our innovation, the better we will be able to present the benefits compared to what is currently being used in the field.
With the inputs from different users, different organisations and collaborators we already have a few conclusions that will help guide the project forward:
We will continue with this process of designing and innovating again based on the feedback and evidence that we gather until we can provide organisations and end users a solutions that adapts to their needs, making it affordable, effective and easy to use.
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