A design-led PhD endeavour through Covid: be empathetic to be creative – See. Feel. Act!

Abstract

The pandemic, which can be envisioned as a collective nightmare for humanity, was contemplated in July 2020 from the author’s residence. Everyone, regardless of social status, had difficult times in their personal and professional lives. Although we researchers are concerned and responsible for enhancing both paradigms of humanity with the help of innovations in emergency situations, this study is based on my experiences pursuing a PhD at the time of Covid-19 in the domain of healthcare infrastructure and service design. The PhD aims to design, develop, and deploy a cost-effective collapsible mobile Primary Health Centre (mPHC) unit specifically tailored for low-resource settings. This report will take readers on an unknown journey through the process of conducting design-led research and disseminating insights for future researchers.

Keywords:

• PhD journey
• Covid 19
• design-led research
• primary healthcare
• emergency innovation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Md Haseen Akhtar

Md. Haseen Akhtar is Prime Minister Research Fellow at the Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, where he is currently pursuing a PhD. He is a recipient of the Fulbright Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowship 2023–2024 at UC Berkeley, USA, and BIRAC Biotechnology Ignition Grantee Fellow 2022–2023, India.

Janakarajan Ramkumar

Dr. Janakarajan Ramkumar is a Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. His research interests in healthcare include primary healthcare innovation, intensive care unit innovation, and biomedical devices innovation.