This month, I visited Vietnam to meet with clinical partners and explore how D-SCAPE could support dengue care in real-world settings. The visit was an important step in grounding our work in the realities of frontline healthcare, beyond what is possible from the lab or the desk.
I brought prototype devices to share with clinicians and to gather feedback on usability, monitoring workflows, and potential features. I’m deeply grateful for the time and openness of the clinical teams, who shared not only their perspectives on the technology, but also their day-to-day experiences of caring for patients during dengue outbreaks. These discussions reinforced how critical it is for new tools to fit seamlessly into already demanding clinical environments.
The conversations were invaluable in shaping our next steps, from understanding how patients are monitored today to identifying where continuous, non-invasive monitoring could provide the greatest clinical value. Just as importantly, they highlighted why maintaining a direct channel of communication with clinicians is essential: solutions that seem promising from an engineering perspective do not always translate into the most practical or useful tools in clinical practice.
Vietnam’s experience with dengue underscores the importance of developing solutions in close partnership with the healthcare systems they are intended to support. This visit strengthened our commitment to co-developing D-SCAPE alongside clinicians in dengue-endemic settings, ensuring the technology remains both clinically relevant and practically deployable.
We are now incorporating this feedback as we refine the system and prepare for the next phase of development and evaluation, with sincere thanks to our partners in Vietnam for their collaboration, insight, and generosity.
