Overview:

A passion project backed by academic research.

In this project I explore the social issues and implications that arise around the topic of vaccines. Attempting to understand the main barriers to vaccines and build a mobile solution to increase vaccine rates in North American children.

I choose this topic for two reasons. The first is that I am very interested in the medical industry and health related technologies, so I wanted to use this project to explore my area of interest. Secondly I wanted to gain an understanding of vaccinations, and gather the facts so I could build an app that would help educate those around me who do not believe in vaccines.

Approach

In order to understand the medical history of vaccines and the societal impacts of vaccinations and mental models of the stakeholders. I began to immerse myself in the medical world, posing questions and utilizing medical books, journals, articles and papers. Then cross referencing this with mental models of stakeholders such as doctors, people who are pro vaccines, and people who are anti vaccines.

Research methods

• academic research with secondary sources (journals, papers, books, articles)

• user interviews

• Vaccination refusal lies in the fear parents have of unknown/unproven dangerous outcomes of vaccination and the responsibility a parent feels to protect their child from this potential harm

• when a parent takes responsibility for their child's health and becomes an informed consumer, they begin to do their own research and collect their own information before coming to a decision

• parents can seek out their own information online and come to what they consider an informed decision. However, there is a large amount of misinformation online that can be hard for the average person to determine is false

• Many anti vaccine individuals believe that vaccines cause autism, due to the rumour living on in chat rooms even after the medical professional who posted the study was discredited and lost his medical license from the report

• if an individual is not vaccinated it not only poses a risk to the individual but also to the community

• as a result of parents fearing vaccines or being misinformed there has been decreased vaccine coverage rates

After conducting research, I wrote a 2500 word case study to highlight the current social issues of vaccination with a primary focus on why and how the parental decision about vaccinating children is made, in addition to how this decision affects society.

(read the full case study here)

The case study focused on three parts:

1. parental responsibility to keep their child safe

2. misinformation of vaccines

3. social impact of vaccines

Identified problem and barriers:

It is clear from this case study that the prominent reason for a parent to be vaccine-hesitant is due to lack of truthful information and understanding of the various aspects and responsibilities of vaccination.

Proposed solution:

In response to combat this issue and the current dropping rate of vaccination among children, I have decided to create an application targeted towards parents.

The mobile application is called “Protected” and is designed to provide educational information to parents about vaccines, answer vaccination questions and demonstrate the importance of vaccines while providing a place for the parent to track/plan and carry out their children(s) vaccination schedule.

Criteria for the solution:

Below I have outlined six specific requirements which after research I believe the application “Protected” must entail in order to be effective in assisting parents and combating the rise in anti vaccination:

1. be educational and informative

2. demonstrate information in easy to understand formats

3. showcase myths and provide the evidence to disprove them

4. help parents track vaccines schedules including making appointments

5. have the ability to store multiple user information

6. the ability to share vaccination data with healthcare professionals

From the information gathered in the competitor research stage it can be determined that Protect has a spot in the marketplace and a competitive advantage.

To begin, Protect offers the user a combination of the majority of all the features found across the various apps, in addition to offering the user more features to interact with.

In addition, Protect serves as both practical to help the user accomplish tasks and educational, a combination which is not often observed in competing apps.

Protect has an advantage as it combines various purposes into one platform which helps to fill a gap in the marketplace.

What I did:

I worked on a passion project combined with an academic paper, to create a health app that positively impacted a social issue.

In this project I wrote a case study that explored the reasons why some parents choose not to vaccinate their children and the social implications that arise from this decision. From the case study I identified the problem and potential solution.

I then built a mobile app to assist parents in understanding, monitoring and tracking their children’s vaccines.

How:

• academic research and user interviews

• wrote a case study built on research

• identified the problem area and potential solution

• designed an app