But it does stay against ether Bitcoin looks set for a monthly decline of nearly 7% and we can take a look and just take a look at May 1st to May 30th. We can see the yes. This is the first time In quite some time we had a little decline, but it's not so bad I mean look if you've been here since 2021 remember those days when it's 67 68 almost 68,000 Those are pretty good times and then of course we went all the way down to around 15,700 and not too much time so for a one-month pullback not too bad


We've been going all over California to make sure everybody is prepared for the next big earthquake. We're able to take our team and go on the road and lead up to this in a way that gets to as many Californians as possible. When I told my mother I wanted to come to San Francisco, there was immediately the first thing she said to me, like warning me about the earthquakes, and I never really took it seriously. The bad experience is definitely, I think we need to be well prepared. And this is all an effort to leading up to building the momentum for October 19, 10-19 a.m. for the Shake Out Drill. This is a test. We encourage everyone to participate in earthquake preparedness drill by dropping, covering, and holding on. As we know in California, earthquakes can happen at any time, and that's a really important part about this tour, is getting out there into the communities, talking about it, enlisting more and more partners every year, just to get the word out and importantly, keep Californians safe.


Okay, I'm very, very happy to wish you welcome to this webinar on data-driven development of COVID-19 vaccines, achieving equity, coverage and sustainability with DHS2. And of course, we are very happy and I think it's very timely as a natural consequence is that the natural next step after us publishing this COVID-19 surveillance packages, now also working with the vaccine. And I hear that in a couple of weeks time, the first package will be demoed. So this is a natural step in the pandemic that while we're waiting for the vaccine to arrive in countries to plan and prepare for doing the vaccine campaigns and also routine vaccine program. And it's very important for us in the DHS2 community and here at the University also that we are, of course we are working with the partnership already existing, like the WHO, we are working closely with them and also leverage the GAVI's current investment for the immunization program that we have worked with for a long time. But also, nor has catalytic funding is very important for us that we have been able to do this. So what we always do and the reason for the pretty much of a success as of now is actually that we are always focusing on strengthening existing systems and tools and capacity. So we start with the countries that are already using DHS2 that we can add to them to the health information system and the capacity in country and integrate it into the existing information structures that are established for national immunization programs. That's very important in order to be able to scale and succeed and sustain. So with that, of course, we will learn from early local expertise and innovation and we, of course, will be able to be resilient in order to be understanding what we can do in order to be better than we are already. So I'm very happy to hand over the word over to Rebecca Potter that are heading this work for us. And then thank you over. Thank you, Kristen. And thank you all for taking the time to join today. I know many people are very busy. So thank you, Kristen, for the introduction. And we just wanted to take a little time to share with our global community. What it is that we were thinking as countries are really preparing and developing their national delivery and vaccine plans for COVID-19 with a couple of vaccines on the horizon. So our principles around this are really to work through the established technology. We have more than 45 countries that already use DHIS-2 for their national immunization programs. And 36 countries are using DHIS-2 to support their COVID-19 surveillance. We want to work through the existing capacity that's within countries, provide that technical support as close to the field as possible through the ministries themselves and their core teams as well as the 13 regional history groups. And we are looking at a suite of customizable tools. So a lot of what we'll go through today is the existing immunization toolkit that is developed for a range of routine vaccinations that are part of the expanded program on immunization. But seeing how we would be able to expand these designs that are already there and customize a bit to allow the COVID-19 vaccines to be integrated within that. As Kristen mentioned, HIST does collaborate with WHO. We are a collaborating center on health information systems strengthening and implementation research. And part of that has been the development of these health data toolkits with DHIS-2 that are aligning to the WHO's global standards and providing a platform through DHIS-2 to help disseminate those standards for national HMIS systems. We also believe that we're trying to look towards sustainable investments. So we do know that we can use these unprecedented opportunities with the pandemics, with outbreaks that have happened before with Ebola, for example, to be able to strengthen the entire health information system. So rather than build up a parallel solution that is only going to work for COVID-19, using a lot of this momentum around the COVID-19 vaccine delivery to strengthen the entire vaccination delivery platform and systems that are in countries. And lastly, we just think that DHIS-2 being a free and open source global public good, that we will be able to support that in a way that's sustainable for countries. So many of you are already aware, many of you might be coming from countries where DHIS-2 has been implemented to support COVID-19 surveillance and response. But over the last several months, beginning in January of 2020 this year with Sri Lanka, who implemented DHIS-2 for points of entry monitoring and screening for COVID-19, we have expanded a toolkit, a COVID-19 surveillance toolkit that's been adopted by 36 countries. And this is one of the first times we've really tested this WHO health data toolkit at scale in such a short period of time. And so we've had a lot of lessons learned from this experience on the surveillance side that we are hoping to leverage and repurpose for our work with vaccine delivery. So to give us a little bit of a framework for where it is, we are focusing our global toolkit. We took some time as well as many meetings with content experts at the WHO and at CDC to understand a little bit better the recently released interim guidance from the WHO on the national delivery and vaccine plans. So this is a document that's now up on the WHO website and will continue to evolve over the next weeks and months as we learn more about the COVID-19 vaccines. But several things came out pretty clearly. And so some of these goals is that we know that countries will need to be able to measure the uptake coverage and particularly equitable distribution over time and by geography and across risk groups. So we looked at our existing WHO EPI module and we think that there are opportunities to take a well-established design that has been adopted by more than 30 countries at national scale to be able to collect and analyze this routine facility data or other points of service delivery on utilization, wastage, cold chain and outreach. So we think this is probably really the bread and butter of the monitoring framework for these national plans. We know that the logistics component is going to be really significant and that readying the supply chains and being able to support traceability of vaccines throughout the supply chain is going to be a major focus. And so DHAs too is not really meant to replace an electronic logistics management information system, but it has been implemented with quite a bit of success in many countries for supply chain solutions at the last mile. So looking at those service delivery sites and particularly from community and facilities and how we could use DHAs too as a stopgap for that last mile service delivery and also being able to link that with existing electronic LMIS and with the HMIS overall. Ensuring that individuals will be able to be monitored for the full course of a multi-dose regimen. It's looking right now that the vaccines that are being approved or have efficacy data are multi-dose vaccines. So being able to track that people get those vaccines and both of them will be pretty important. And we have several immunization registry programs that have been deployed at scale for example in Rwanda. Providing a personal vaccination record and certificate. So this generation of health certificates linked with e-registries. For us we consider this a bit of a local innovation with DHAs too at this point. And that is to say we don't currently have a generic global solution for this but we have seen multiple countries in their COVID-19 responses using their DHAs to case-based data to generate these official electronic health certificates such as generating travel passes in Uganda, Guinea-Bissau and Rwanda based on the negative testing data. We know that these plans are going to require multiple distribution strategies and there might be novel and innovation distribution approaches. So we have looked back at some of the use cases around mass campaigns which may become one of several distribution strategies applied in a country to achieve coverage and be able to target the populations that they will be prioritizing and disaggregating in their micro plans. So we'll hear a little bit more from the Uganda and a bit on the Bangladesh use case that's ongoing. And lastly monitoring vaccines safely. Safety, we have worked with the WHO with Madhav and his group at headquarters level to develop an adverse events following immunization tracker based on these global standards. And we've had some early discussions with WHO AFRO as well in how to support national systems to strengthen vaccine safety surveillance. So we believe that this is an opportunity to bring COVID-19 into a framework, into sort of an integrated system for adverse events monitoring. So to summarize our approach we are aiming to build on our established approaches and partnerships. So leveraging the WHO collaboration, but also leveraging Gavi's investments in the DHIS toolkit for immunization program data solutions. This has really been the baseline of our global toolkit of DHIS to configuration design. And the idea is that we take what's been built that's around 90 percent there and be able to reorient and customize and improve for the COVID use case. In addition we have been very fortunate to have some catalytic funding from NORAD to support the COVID-19 response efforts. And we would like to really strengthen the existing systems and tools and capacities of countries. So primarily we are looking at countries who are already using DHIS too for their immunization programs. That's where we think we have the most value to add and where we can actually accelerate progress and strengthening in country. And lastly we want to be able to leverage local expertise and innovation. And this is really the component around how much we as a global public good are learning through local implementation. So those health certificates were one example that I think are really critically important. So we are developing at a global level but we are consistently investing in these feedback loops so that we can understand what approaches are working in countries and how we can use our platforms to disseminate those approaches to other countries to adapt as well. So I will start with just a little bit of overview on a couple solutions and then hand off to several colleagues. So at this part in the presentation we want to share some of what's in our existing immunization toolkit and describe a bit how we might see this being adapted for COVID-19 vaccine delivery. So one of the real, I would say probably the foundation of this toolkit is this WHO metadata package for the expanded program on immunization. And so this is a standard metadata package developed through the collaboration with WHO. And it's been implemented and installed in 30 countries in their national HMIS to support the immunization program monitoring. So this toolkit, it already includes, it focuses on facility level reporting and analysis. Of course, the analysis can scale up through that hierarchy. So facility to district to province to national level. But we are capturing vaccinations and target populations for those vaccinations to understand how the vaccines are being administered among key populations. There's a basic stock component that I'll talk about a little more. Capturing data on the cold chain. So the functional refrigerators and alarms at facility level. As well as some kind of basic data around outreach sessions and adverse events. And so these indicators and analytical outputs that come with these standardized dashboards and packages include a lot of the key ones that we know are also included in the NDVP guidance, which is the coverage rates, the vaccines administered, cold chain wasted rates in particular, and also understanding dropout rates for multi regimen vaccines. So this is a bit of a snapshot of what one of those dashboards looks like now. So as you can see, we're able to analyze a lot of this data across the different components of immunization programs. So an immunization program manager would need to be able to understand things like the vaccine coverage, but also be able to understand the stock status down to facility level, understand which facilities are with adequate stock or which ones are experiencing stock out in order to plan some response. You can see some of the cold chain components here with the temperature alarms. We know the cold chain requirements for the COVID vaccine might actually even be more challenging for countries to monitor and implement and develop infrastructure for as well as bringing in these wasted rates and the dropout rates. So the main point here is to be able to have all these key components of your immunization program and be able to analyze this in an integrated way. So I'll give you a little bit of a snapshot included in this basic facility package, this EPI package. There's already included some key stock data at that facility level. So as I was saying, where DHIS2 is able to fill the gap at the last mile and capture some of these key logistics data at facility level and then for countries to be able to put that alongside their ELMIS. But for example, we are really trying to promote this facility level that is that is a gap for many countries, but also really critically important for those programs to be able to develop their supply chain interventions and to be able to get the stocks where they are needed and ensure that stocks are available in appropriate quantities for that facility's catchment area. In addition to some of that basic logistics work, there's also some more innovative approaches. And so there are countries like, I believe it's Kenya who implemented sort of a tracker based Seastock system. And this here that I'm showing is an example from Yemen from ICRC where we are seeing countries, particularly at that facility level, taking advantage of the functionality of DHIS2 and also with the Android app to be able to support some of these vaccine catalogs in DHIS2 at the facility level where another electronic system might not be in place. So in tandem with the Android app, what we're able to do here is generate a product catalog that include pictures. So it's quite easy for the pharmacy managers or the stock managers at facility level to understand what their product catalog is and be able to facilitate this supply in reporting and the supply out reporting. Generally, what might be recommended is to be able to do this on a daily basis. And by integrating some of this functionality of the DHIS2 Android app, so there is barcode searching functionality. This also works for QR codes. This can potentially support the use case around traceability down to the facility level. Although we do know based on the guidance we've read so far that likely having these barcodes at vial level seems that it's not going to be likely, at least in the short term. But there might be some solutions here around how facilities are capturing the supply in and supply out for their stock stores within that facility. And so the app also allows you to do some basic data entry, the supply in supply out, and then also be able to generate these automatic notifications. So for example, when there are stock outs or emergency resupply workflow support, of course all of the data captured in DHIS2, these indicators can be calculated on the fly. So things like the average consumption, the stock status per facility or stock out days, they can be monitored on these dashboards at district or even higher levels. So this is just a time to remind everyone that the DHIS2 Android capture app it's natively integrated with DHIS2. So any country is able to develop a configuration or adopt a standard package and customize that configuration to their needs. And depending on the infrastructure that's available in different levels of the health facility, these different packages that data collection can be optimized for Android if it's mobile devices, or it can also be optimized for your web-based data entry and analysis as well. So with all of these packages it will be good to keep in mind that countries will always have the option without needing any sort of interoperability layers to have that mobile data capture option. And so with this, I'm happy to hand over to my colleague, Mike Frost, who's the tracker product manager to talk through a couple of these solutions that are tracker-based for the COVID immunization toolkit. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Rebecca. So we've been, as Rebecca says, working closely with a number of groups that are focused on the requirements for COVID vaccine delivery and monitoring. We've been operating off of the WHO interim guidance that just came out in mid-November. We're working closely with the CDC, conversations, of course, with our partners at Gaby, also the Brighton collaboration. So a number of different groups that are thinking this through from many different angles, and we're trying to operationalize those. And as Rebecca said, building it on top of existing tools and making this, you know, as robust as possible to be easy to adopt and to sustain. So one of the requirements that seems like it's going to be very important is, of course, the individual level data as we're rolling out the COVID vaccine, particularly longitudinal, knowing that the persons has completed the regimen, they've received the multi-dose for the various vaccines that are coming online and going to be adopted. So we've put together right now a starting registry for the COVID vaccine. This is building off of work that we've done for a couple of years now with Gaby and with UNICEF to make a full immunization registry. That work, which a number of countries have adopted, is, of course, focused on the childhood vaccines. And it's actually quite a complex and sophisticated program that's making recommendations about which vaccines a child receives based on their risk factors, based on their age, all of these different things. For the COVID registry, it actually doesn't need to be integrated with that necessarily. It can be a very simple standalone COVID vaccine registry with a lot less in terms of complexity, in terms of the various kind of program rules and things that people would use to do decision support. And it collects just the required and kind of minimum data set at this point. We will, of course, adapt this over time as more requirements become firm and clear. But just saying from our design perspective, we want this to be something that can easily be, you know, modular. It can fit in with, you know, what other tracker programs the country may be running. It would share a pool of tracked entities or people that have been registered. So if you already are running tracker for TB, HIV, disease surveillance, any number of topics, this program could just sit alongside those others. If you do a search within the program, it would bring up from that same pool of people. And you would be able to follow them. You can see the three kind of grade boxes there would be the three stages for being registered into the program, screen for eligibility, and then receiving your two doses. Along with this program would be accompanying notifications that can be sent to the person to remind them to come back to receive their second dose, giving them some information about where and why to receive that second dose. And like all of the tracker programs, this is natively functional with Android as well, which would be the recommended solution for those cases where you have intermittent connectivity or you're offline, you can operate on Android and still retain this information. This of course is something that we're thinking of in terms of the vaccine being integrated in kind of a routine delivery approach, whether it's coming from the facility level or some other kind of integrated approach. That's where this really is the most likely venue to be using tracker. This does match up with our expectations about how the vaccine will be rolled out. It's going to be a phased rollout in most countries where there's not enough vaccine for the entire population, but instead you're focusing on high-risk groups, you're focusing on health workers, trying to make sure that you're rolling out the vaccine in the areas where it will have the most impact. And so again, tracker can be very helpful in this regard and identifying the right individuals, noting what the risk factors are for that individual, making sure that they receive all of their doses. Next slide. So we know that with the completion of these doses, it's of course very important also for the person that has received them to be able to demonstrate that they have completed, particularly for their ability to travel, for their ability to be able to demonstrate that they've been fully vaccinated. As Rebecca made mention, this is something that has already been going on in Rwanda, Uganda, and Guinea-Bissau in terms of being able to produce a barcode, a QR code, some kind of official documentation that they have been treated or that they've been tested in the existing COVID work. And it's a fairly straightforward effort to then extend this to vaccination as well. You're seeing a couple of the examples from these different countries that have been built on to, for example, the case-based surveillance COVID package, the ability to produce a PDF that has the digital signatures demonstrates who has provided this. These, again, have been innovations that have come up from the countries themselves and they're implementing partners. We're looking now about a standardized way to integrate that into DHS2, but it also was something that was fairly straightforward to introduce in the first place. We may have some people on the call that actually worked on these. If questions come up, we can refer you to them. There's also a link that shows you a write-up here from the slide. We'll be sharing these slides with everybody that joined the webinar. You can follow up and read a bit more about how this was integrated, but it's definitely part of what we're thinking is a common part of the package that should be offered, and we'll be working on more generic ways to stay implement this. Next slide, please. One of the WHO packages that we had already built over the last couple of years, working very closely with WHO and with Gaby, is for recording adverse events following immunization, AEFI. We had previously built this package, and in fact it was due to be published now, and it's based entirely on the WHO workflow, which has been adopted by most countries. You can see a picture of the actual pay reform that is used to follow up an investigation behind an adverse event, identifying where the immunization was received, which immunization it was, which batch it comes from, expiry date, dilute, and all of this information, and of course the adverse reaction itself, what was caused. This is going to be very important for the COVID vaccines, which as everyone knows have been developed very rapidly. There is good data and testing behind them, but still we want to keep a global eye on any adverse events and be quick to react. This package already follows the workflow recommended by WHO, allowing for the different levels, those that first receive the patient that is having an adverse event, to those that need to do the investigation follow up, the notifications associated with an adverse event, and accompanying dashboard with all of the indicators that are recommended by WHO. So this package is actually available and ready to go. The only thing it's lacking right now are the names of the COVID vaccine, which of course can very easily be added based on which vaccine the country is using. So this one is something that we think is fairly ready to go and will be made available soon. One important part of this is that there is a global database for reporting adverse events for immunizations that is supported by WHO, it's called Vigibase. Vigibase has an accompanying piece of software called Vigiflow that many, many countries are using to report to this global repository. We've been working with the people behind Vigibase and Vigiflow for the last six weeks or so to adopt the E2B standard for reporting these adverse events and have this as an integrated part of the package so that if you are a country that has a requirement to report to this adverse events global repository, then you should be able to do so using this package, which again will have I think very importance, high importance globally. There's a lot of interest in making sure that the COVID vaccines are safe and that there can be a quick response if there is an uptick in adverse events. And with that, let me just see. I'm not sure if we ended up getting prospered to join us so I can talk about the next slide. So one other method of delivery for the COVID vaccine may be mass campaigns. Again, it may actually be kind of a tandem approach where you have a phased rollout where you're doing kind of targeted smaller campaigns and different geographies based on the amount of the vaccine that you have and the population you're trying to reach. What we've done for this is a built off an approach that was led by our HIST group in Uganda. You're seeing a dashboard that they created for monitoring mass campaigns. This is meant to be a real-time dashboard. You're seeing pictures from the command centers both at the national level and the district level as the campaign is proceeding, being able to monitor the delivery of the vaccines and keeping an eye on when they're reaching their coverage levels, making sure that you're making decisions about repositioning of supplies based on need, and making sure that you have a sense of when the campaign can actually end if you've reached the goals that have been established for the campaign. The dashboard that you're seeing here originally was customized by HIST Uganda, but the functionality that it's demonstrating here is something that's native to DHS-2 as of 234 and can be configured in there for any vaccination campaign. Again, the COVID is one that you can configure for specifically, but it also can support other campaigns as well. We're working on making sure that we can have an offer of something of this sort for the prior versions of DHS-2 as well, so taking the work that HIST Uganda has done and turning it into, for example, a basic app that you could use for the COVID vaccine. One word about all of these individual level versions of DHS-2, whether you're using tracker or events for campaigns or for routine, all of this is, you know, we're very aware that the COVID vaccine is going to be massive, that the uptake is expected to be, you know, global, that every country is trying to hit a very high target population. And so we have on our mind performance and an emphasis on ensuring that the DHS-2 system is able to handle the high number of records and the, you know, the persistent connection that is required. We're learning right now from a massive campaign for MMR that is going on in Bangladesh using the Android application and events. We're working closely to make sure that that runs smoothly and to identify any pain points for that. We've also, in the last couple of years, worked closely with a number of the largest-scale tracker implementations running globally and have made already a number of performance improvements. We're forming a bit of a task force on our side of the university to make sure that we continue to do that, that we learn from these very large COVID packages that have been rolled out in 36 countries already. And we can have some more definitive statements about what the kind of limitations and parameters are for the tracker platform, for events, for Android, so that countries can have clear information about, you know, when and where to scale, and what kinds of infrastructure are needed to support it. So you'll see more information about performance and kind of what the parameters are as we publish these packages and we put forward those efforts. So with that, I think I will now turn to our colleague Anna, who's going to talk us through a bit of the implementation side and how to move this forward for your country. Thank you very much, Mike. So I will talk briefly on what it takes to operationalize this and implement it at the national level. So there are three levels of operationalizing DHS-2 for COVID. We have the global development of global goods, including the DHS-2 software itself and the digital packages for COVID that my colleagues have presented based on WHO guidance. And this also includes actively seeking experience from the field implementations to improve them as we progress. And also to install, to update implementation guides and develop standard training materials. Then we have expert expertise on regional level through the HIST groups that can support adaptation of these packages to the local settings. And the HIST groups can support on several things. They can do host regional academies, for example, conduct training of trainers at the national level. And they also have close working relationships with the ministries of health. And then of course, it's the work at the national level to implement the toolkits to the national and local contexts. And that includes activities such as training and supporting end users and to actually deploy these local innovations and to procure and maintain devices to mention a few. Next slide, please. And using DHS-2 for COVID management when the country is already using DHS-2 has several advantages. It reduces the barrier to entry and training required as the health personnel is already trained and familiar with DHS-2. It's reusing existing technology and infrastructure. So most places there are already existing devices that can be reused. It leverages the Ministry of Health Corps, HMIS teams, their capacity to customize the software and the toolkits. And it's also working through the existing immunization program processes where there's already a lot of work ongoing on several other areas around immunization. And then it's also reinforcing and strengthening the overall data management in use for immunization program. We do believe that working with data management in use of COVID data would also benefit the rest of the immunization program as a whole. And then the example budget to the right that highlights some of the core costs associated with implementing in a country. It includes TA costs, of course, but the majority of the costs are associated with end-user trainings and potentially new devices. And the HISP groups, they can also assist countries in planning and budgeting for projects like this. So please do reach out to us and we can also help with that. And with that, I will give the word back to Rebecca. Thanks, Anna and Mike. So we will be sharing this slide deck after this webinar. But we wanted to point you guys in a few different places. So we have just updated our website to also have a COVID vaccine delivery sub-page in the way that we did with the surveillance so that we can continue to add information there, start to post the different packages, things like that. There's a community of practice channel that's been started. It was actually shared with this webinar invite. So that's the place where we will go to continue having some different discussions. And of course, you're welcome to contact us by email at any time. I'm sure people, we don't understand that countries are really in a large planning phase themselves right now. And we wanted to give you a sense of what our timelines are looking like. So we have the base of this immunization toolkit already developed. So what we will be working on in the next few weeks, for example, is to be able to get some sort of demo site up. So the standard packages, they actually exist. They just don't have COVID data elements yet. So we'll make sure to reshare some of those links. But we will be working on these in a works in progress on developing some prototypes to be able to help our partners visualize and interact with these packages and start to see how COVID-19 might roll into it. But I will also have to say that at this time, University of Oslo, we're working with the content expert groups to really understand what these metadata requirements are going to be. So this is going to be a bit of an iterative phase we think over the next month until after the holidays, probably, to understand a bit more precisely the monitoring framework that's going to accompany that WHO guidance for national delivery and vaccination plans, and then be able to understand a bit more precisely what the metadata requirements are, what the potential disaggregations will be, apply those to some of our standard metadata, but also be able to start documenting some of the implementation guidance for countries to be able to adapt that to their context. So just one example of that might be national plans will have to determine sort of the prioritization and rollout across different types of at-risk groups. So countries will end up defining what those at-risk groups are and where they are targeted in sort of a phased rollout plan, but we will be aiming to provide some standard metadata that provides a framework for that and something to kind of pick and pull from. So this entire toolkit, it's very modular. It's intended to be a toolkit that countries can choose which components are going to make sense for them and also to work through where they might be able to integrate these with existing systems that are in place. So with that in mind, I know we have some, probably, some ministry of health that have joined this webinar. Many of us already have contact with regional HIST groups. So if you have any questions about specific country-specific plans related to DHIS2 or you would just like some more information to start that conversation going, you're, of course, welcome to contact the regional HIST groups. Or if you're a country that doesn't have an existing contact with a HIST group, you're also welcome to email us at our COVID-at-DHIS2.org email and we can start to get you connected with the different HIST groups that are supporting in a regional way. So finding HIST groups that would meet your language needs and also a geographic proximity.


First of all, I must congratulate Bapu, Varashyam, and all his gang for inviting a useless designer and UX designer here. So thank you. He asked me to give keynote address. But my key has become so old now. Nobody listens to me. So I thought I will have a discussion instead of keynote address. I think before we start this interaction with Bapu, I have something to say because I don't know whether those questionnaires will bring out those points or not here. So I just open up myself and then let's see how it goes. I'm very bad in impromptu thing. But I have to face my student here. Earlier, he has to face me now. I have to go back. When I go back, yes. Thank you. I'm going to begin with a provocation. I have to say that I come to the term UX designer with some reservation. It does the traditional approach where one investigates how humans interface with product actually for short. Good Donald Norman have done away with yet another design term. We have taught in our design schools that the design process begin with collection of data from all stakeholders, not just physical, but also social, psychological, economical, or ethnographical. Does UX design, by its degree of specialization, detract from the holistic idea of design and the creative challenges it possess in fear of easier goals? In medicine, for example, we have gone from general practitioner to specialist. Each body part has its association with doctors, ophthalmogenes, ENT specialists, neurologists, spinal cord specialists, heart specialists, so forth and so on, all the way down to your feet. A confused patient while making those productionals around the galaxy of specialists began to doubt his real ailment in spending patients from one specialist to another. Doctors show little empathy towards the patient. The reason for my concern is that we run genuine risk of segregating design into too many subfields. Design is not so complex that it cannot be learned with four years of rigorous training. We need to impart training that will make complete designers who can deal with all eventualities. I am surprised that design thinking is being offered as an elective in design school. I feel that designers should be trained to develop his ability to detect the multi-layer problems related to product, product systems, environment. As Professor Bonjibi said, he was my teacher in Germany. And I quote, design is not added value. Design is value. Training that makes a designer an omnipotent person who can solve complex design problems may be the need of the hour. That said, I am aware that like medicine, design has also become complex due to its multidisciplinary content. Today, today's issues are more complex and challenging than any that have come before. Products and product systems are now associated with their interaction with the user. Products are expected to serve not only the function, but also be an experience social and behavior. Social and behavioral science, human cognition, and emotion, sensation and movement, sufficient knowledge to interpret and analyze the data, and an understanding of scientific methods has become very relevant in the process of human-friendly design. In this context, one should examine the potential application of UX design around us.  Public officials tend to be seasoned practitioners on methodologies more commonly associated with optimizing the existing services, but are less familiar with the methods and tools associated with innovation such as design thinking. Michael Steinberg, government innovator and the founder, Snow Cone and Hestag UK, has this to say, and I quote, increasingly public sector has to deal with uncertainty rather than the risk. And it is good at managing the risk, but bad in managing the uncertainty. Design offers the capacity to engage with user needs, social needs, and to take a prototyping approach to the solution. This is the way to build a bridge between under uncertainty and the risk, I quote. We in Mumbai experience this phenomenon when 30 or more people died during the stampede at Alpiston railway station, Food Bridge. This is because the absence of productive factor of uncertainty in designing process. The government has introduced massive developmental projects. If this project had to achieve their desired result, large scale analytical studies of user's experience in each of these projects are required before they go into fatigue stage. These projects are background of major development for upgrading the lifestyle of 1.5 billion people of our population. UX designers should take the enormity and the complexity of this project as a challenge. If we have to avoid difficulties that people face, and in many cases death, a well-trained service designer with a good knowledge of UX process is must in the planning teams. It is high time that we include service design into the designs curriculum. In a large and diverse democratic environment like ours, the basic objective of design is to benefit masses and not just few limited privilege view. The GNP is not only yardstick to measure the growth of our nation. Industrialization can democratize consumption and provide for a broad sector of population. This implies access to world of products and services in different areas of everyday life like health, housing, farming, education, transport, to mention few. This emphasis a need to take serious steps to plan directed design and development program to help our vast population. The 12th fire plan has envisaged by our planning commission including more than 30 sectors of for faster, more inclusive, and substantial growth. Each and every sector is helplessly looking for innovative input from designer and design planners. My humble request, therefore, to organize of the seminar would be that next year should be entirely devoted to designing and design UX design and public sector. And invites could be planners, decision makers, and ministers from the government. Thank you. Exactly like the very similar points. I think we should take it forward. So they wanted to have this design education for public sector. So we have given a proposal to have a design hub at Hyderabad and they agreed to take it forward. And we already started working with traffic and safety. The team of UX India, we already involved. And I would definitely take this as for the next conference. Maybe the theme could be that. I think it's really good solution. So I've been receiving several SMS. One of the most of them are asking, the first question is, what is your secret to your evergreen energy? Oh, I don't know. I wanted to see my face in the mirror. So I don't think of your age. So what is actually inspiring you? Continuously you're motivated from the beginning. Maybe my wife. Yes. In fact, that's a question. The next question was that, you have really influenced design education in India. So who was your influence, Mrs. Narkini or ma'am? Along with Mrs. Narkini, there are many, many people. I think my teachers, my mentors. I think it was, it has come when I was born, I think. And yeah, you get inspired by many things around you. If you openly see what's happening around you and stuff. You feel that we should also put yourself into that. Definitely. I think that's one of the influences. I would like to share that. To leading to that, I've actually read your first day at Ulm School in Germany, first day of your class. Would you like to share what has happened to you that day? Very funny things happens there. I think I enjoyed my thing more in German school than in Indian school of art here. My first day in my class, I studied in Hochschule für Gestaltum, a school of design in Ulm. I think you almost be heard about that school. Very famous school in design, where Max Biel and all those big people. It was a continuation of the Bauhaus. And my first day was, it was in November. You can understand, yeah, November snowing outside. And I was with my nylon shirt. Somebody told me you buy all your dresses there in Germany, because you get the fashion, or top post fashion there, up to date with the fashion there. So I thought, I will go to Germany, and I'll have all my winter coats and everything there. But I was not knowing that there was a minus 20 cent degree there. So when I entered with that thing in the class, I was surprised. Everybody was silent and looking at me. And within a few seconds, I was being flooded with the snowballs on my face, yeah, all throughout the class. And class was made messy, the whole thing was. I was really surprised. And that has really developed a very good relation with my classmates and sort of a very good bonding. It has created with this first experience. Because I was really afraid to go in. First of all, I was not knowing the German language, because somebody told me it's better you learn your language there rather than here. Because I was already one month late. So with that sort of thing, that's quite a good experience. And then I become, first thing they taught me was two German letters. One is hungrik, it's been hungrik, and it's been thirsty. That means he thought all Indians are coming there. They are always hungry. So hungrik, when I am hungrik, I should say hungrik. And when I am thirsty, I should say thirsty. So this first two words I learned in Germany is that for my students. So I would like to share my first day in my school, like design school IDC. And he was my professor. My first day was like literally terrible. He was a tiger. And people say, no, do, no, do, no. And we're all used to see. So what we have happened is we just came to the hostels. And with the first day, I think Prasad is also here. He actually recognized that. So we all came from different regions, like Kerala, Maharashtra, Amdra. So we were from different schools, so different cultures. So people used to come with polygene bags, like briefcases. I don't know why people used to come with briefcases and big bags with all the odd material. And we used to have a big table around. We used to sit around. And we kept everything on the top. So he came in with that. What do you guys think? This is not an art school. This is a design school. And we were on the second floor. It threw everything out from the second floor, from the window. So what has happened? Everything we kept, all our material, everything. And everything was clean. We kept quiet. And we can't talk anything. We can't say anything. And we don't know when we want to go back and to collect. We don't know that it will be there or not. So that actually really influenced me and also my classmates, I'm sure, that how to be organized. If you are organized at your workspace and the mind works really clear, and it's actually the first step for us. It really helped us, sir, it impressed us. I'm not that strict now anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I have a- I myself diluted because of the environment. Yeah. So I have another question on that, but before we go into that, so one of the questions I got is a journey of design in India. So how design education and practice emerged and changed over the years? Let you know from your experience. I think it's very natural that a student from old, he comes out as a clinical designer, you know? Everything, he sees white and gray is here, nothing like that. But there's a reason behind all these things. Ulm, my training was that just design your product as true with yourself. It's a Gandhian philosophy. Nothing more, nothing less. Just do it whatever you want. No adding of labels or anything like that. And that was the same philosophy Ulm was following here. That product is a part of your environment. It should subdued. It should not come like, like it should not exhibit himself like that. And that is because of many reasons that your decisions are very correct, logical. They are human. And the forms are also very true to the dysfunction. And I think this philosophy was very much appropriate for our environment here in India, I think. And I thought the Ulm approach was correct approach to follow here in India because it saves the material, it saves the redundancy in the form, it saves a lot of things. And where that time our economy was going if we don't have any possibilities of luxury of having a lot of materials and sort of things. Everywhere we had to find out an economical solution. And I thought this is the right approach, the Ulm approach for our economy that time. And that's why I have to follow this approach of purity of things, you know. Purity of forms, purity of technical things. Minimum wastage of material, all these things. Plus the human factors, ergonomics and all those things. So the things started from that culture. And it has been spread, Ulm in India also was very much because Professor Ullo was professor of this visual, all these people were there from Germany. And they also brought this, that culture in NID. So we were all working together. My first exposure to NID was with Ullo and those people. And we work on some sort of ideology for our approach to design. So that time, this particular philosophy was very appropriate and that has, I think, a good luck that everybody followed during that time. Otherwise I couldn't have said very different things into Indian design and things. So if you didn't go to Ulm, how you could have influenced Indian design now? Pardon me? If you didn't go to Ulm, how you would have influenced Indian design? I don't know. We have seen all the design as a McDonald's here. We were McDonald's, you know. The Americans would have been influenced by our design approach. When I was there studying, a lot of criticism in our school about American styling, extra styling like that car should look like a rockets and sort of thing. So without taking care of safety factors but more this symbolic factors on product. So we level on the product.  So all these stickers were put on those functional objects. And that was, Ulm was very much against all these things. This styling with the American styling. So that could have been done. So when we were in terms of American styling here, without knowing the benefits and this. So you have designed a lot of exterior, I think that time it's called exterior design for consumer products. In 60s, I think most of the consumers in India used your products. So what was the design perception on people? Yeah, I think when I started practicing here, I think that time this design, product design was completely new. No one was knowing. Most of the time people used to get a product from abroad, open it, give it a new terminal, reverse engineering or something like that. They used to name it and you know they had to put it and that has become their research object. Open the foreign products, open it and do exactly what they have done. So they had a high scope in redesigning or innovation or and that's one of the reason why we have left behind this innovation thing. In industry we never had this innovation culture we had developed because I have seen in Brown or in Phillips abroad the way they give the time, their energy and sort of the seriousness about the new innovations and sort of. That culture was never followed here in our industry. Now they understood that they talk about design. Innovation doesn't come by hearing lectures and sort of thing. You have to develop that culture within the organization with your engineers and give them scope, you give them time, give them opportunity and resources. Then they think comes up your new products will come out. But that time it was not, each product was that time important.  I remember I was invited by ambassador car to redesign. I was so happy where they have designing a car now here at that stage. When I went there they asked me to design the bonnet and some silver thing and that sort of thing. I said, forget it, yeah I don't want to do it.  Something like that, their expectation, yeah. So that was the thing. They're thinking about design, that design means just a decoration to make the object very beautiful and sort of thing, yeah. So the things were different. I remember I was designing a water cooler for blue star that time, yeah. And when I send my drawing with, I thought the geometrical drawing, they will understand better. But they couldn't understand. So I had to go there, be there in the thing, make the prototype there. They were not knowing even that time what is the fiberglass and sort of thing. So all this thing was very new that time. And in that sort of environment, you have to work as a designer.  Not only design, but you have to see who can do what and sort of thing. Go around the market and look for those people and sort of, which was very different. That's true, yeah. So now it is, you are very lucky that you have got all those facilities now. So I think you have started product design at NID and IDC industrial design center, hardcore technology and engineering school, IIT in industrial technology. How did you influence this technology driven school to start a design school? Because I think most of you all have problem, right? If you are working with companies, even just to start with setting up a team itself is difficult, convincing engineers is difficult. Setting up a lab itself is so much difficult. You know, usability lab, convincing these leaders and technologists. How did you do that? Yeah, it's very, people say it was a miracle to start a design program in IIT, yeah. But it was not a miracle. I think it was a need of that time because when government decided to have this program, product design or industrial design program in IIT, there are many reasons for that thing. The first reason was that that time the engineers was having a lot of unemployment. Our industry was really going in a bad patch and sort of thing. So early there is employment for engineers and so government are what we can do with this engineers. We can give them new role now. And that was again big headache for me to train engineers as a designer, you know. Because they come with all mental blocks and they will ask you why I should do that and why all sort of things were there. But I took that challenge. I thought that, yes, we'll start this sort of thing. Let's see how it works. IIT because of this problem, it has come to IIT. But then it was my luck or good luck that I got a very good faculty. I got very good directors that time to run this program. They were very open-minded. So the first thing I did in IIT was that in all the MTech program, there were 75% lectures and 25% lab. I completely turned around. Product design program, 25% lectures, 75% practice. So that was new for them to think about that MTech level program could be like this. So this model I had to change is I had to convince them. I had to bring all the faculty, professors from other department to see what is happening here, how they are studying the objects, how they are researching and sort of thing. And then they realized this is equivalent to MTech level program. So once they understood when they are convinced, then the things become much easier to run this program. That's what you did in the 60s. I did in the 60s. That's a great thing, yeah. So general question is like when you say the influential leaders, the general traits, you know, most of these influential speakers and leaders, they have a great voice and personality.   So whenever I want to phone, I say, oh Mrs. Narakani, I want to talk with Professor Narakani. So nothing to do with my voice. But maybe I'm much informal with everybody. So it doesn't, I have not created that sort of wall in between myself and my director. And there's also your fortune that you get good people around you to make decisions. So that makes my life easier. First thing I did was that I took my director all around the world to school design schools. So when he see those design students, compare my school, he will understand where we are. So all the decision after was become very easy to take it. Most of the decision in those government were out of the thing. It's not a regular decision, you know, particularly in design department. Whatever you do is a special case. So I had to write because being a design thing school, I had to have this sort of thing differently. And it happens, it's happened like that. And if you look at any right now, the schools, okay, we want to run a certification course or a couple of months diploma and the charge, use money, everything is commercialized right now. But what we learned from you is totally different philosophy. Who do you like to share when you started this IDC? What was your philosophy? No, my philosophy was not to compromise the finesse of the things.  So there I never compromise right from the beginning. And that has made the culture. So whenever whatever you do has to be perfect. It should not be any lack or anything like that.  And how to reach that quality, how to develop that mindset, that to bring out various other types of people and interact with them, with your students and sort of thing. That was very important because design was completely new there in IIT environment itself. So to create that sort of environment within the thing. So I had to participate in their program, I had to design their program so they know what is the standard and sort of thing, how it has to be planned and all sort of. So all these things, you take them within yourself. So you also had the socially consciousness. Yeah, there's another thing that arrived from the beginning. My approach was that make the designer a socially conscious designer. Not because that demands, India demands that sort of approach here. Because there was so much, so many problems. Only industry cannot solve this thing. Only designers themselves, they involve into this sort of area. And that was one of the thing which, that is because my diploma project was like that in old, in Germany. I wrote a thesis on how a design could help in developmental plans in a country like India. And I had taken each of this section and I saw the relations of design to their development and sort of. So that was the background behind my, this thing to start this school and the program. So actually one important thing when you started school in Gohati, IIT Gohati. So you introduced bamboo. So people thought, what is it bamboo? Right now we are talking about VR here and bamboo and all, why bamboo? But actually change the economy in that state. So would you like to share what was the reason you actually, how did you choose? Yeah, I think whenever you start any design program, I mean anywhere, you have to find out the uniqueness of the thing here. You can start the same program in Bombay whatever I did, I should do it in Gohati. Their problems are different, their environments are, their economy is different. And how you try to support that set up. And you know, Assam is very much rich in bamboo and cane and sort of thing. But it is not useful in proper sense. They were using it for making this basketry and that sort of thing, which is not so monetary beneficial. It can keep those viewers very substantial sort of income and sort of. So I had to find out the ways. So I thought that why can't we use utilitarian product in bamboo and cane and sort of thing. So I completely developed a whole system of hospital furniture in bamboo and cane, school furniture in bamboo, so that this can go into various sectors and sort of thing. And this viewers of those craftsmen can earn some more money and sort of thing. But for that, I had to develop that sort of culture within IIT to develop craftsmen and those sort of thing. Within IIT was again a most difficult job. The first craftsman I employed in IIT, Gohati was level on the other technical staff. It was difficult to convince. How a craftsman, which without having any formal education can be an engineer or something that come to that level of engineer's payment and sort of. But I had to convince them that they are master craftsmen. They are equivalent to any of your engineers and sort of. So this way you develop that sort of confidence with them. And once they saw, when they see come there, they do their work and when you see those things, they understand the value of those people. And this way I developed it. The first thing I did was that how to develop this sort of sensitivity towards the material among the students. Because they are going to carry out this program. This fineness in the product design. So I changed the assignments also. The types of assignments they should take it and all sort of thing. Whole academic format was changed in I think what it is. Just to be relevant to their environment and the needs and so on. So actually there are so many text messages are coming. So time is less. So I would like to take quick questions from them. So the times are changing. For example, we started with product design. We called it visual communication. Then animation also came in the middle. And then slowly interaction design, UX. And now we are service design. Things keep changing. So to be relevant in this time changes. So what are the important things for a designer we never should leave that aside of? What are the qualities, very important qualities to have? I do not know, but what I feel is that the grammar of design is same. You can use it for film, you can use it for products, you use it for writing a story or whatever it is. Now if you follow that grammar, those ethics, qualities of design and sort of thing. I think all these things changes will come. But this is again for use of humanity. And that aspect you understand. How to see those things as you design and all those AI design and all those things. I think one should not bother about this is going to change because of the technology, because of the environment. All these things are changing every day. Of course, one thing is changing is our hunger. And I think till that time, it's still in contact. We don't have to think artificial, think food. So I think things will go on. So the things are very rapid way changing. Like today we are talking about AR, VR, artificial intelligence, machine learning. So how do we be relevant in this? Because when we were taught, you are only purely design. Now the technology is also overpowering. So the next generation designer, do you think we need to have that combination of this? Or what is your opinion on that? I think one has to see this for development very sensitively. But particularly in India, when we are really looking for a massive jobs sort of thing, whether it's automation or this artificial intelligence will economize the employment aspect and sort of thing. And how we can develop. So we have to very select to where we should use this technology. When there are risky job or very dangerous thing or unhealthy job, we can use this automotive, robotics sort of things, products. But where we need extra jobs and sort of things, we have to be very clear. I think we should not limit to those contexts. So we should keep that intact. Slowly it will integrate with them instead of jump. I think people will revolutionize. They revolt against you. So they don't have the jobs. Even now I see design is still saying emerging profession. But in 60s, how did you choose design as your profession? Maybe I don't know how I choose. It happens like that. By accident, I went to attend someone lecture in Bombay. The lecture was attended by Indian Chamber of Commerce. And they have invited one designer from Britain. And I happened to attend. And he talked about designing windows and sort of thing. So I thought, why can't we change? I was working as a art director in a organizing firm there at that time. I just finished my art school education. And I thought, yes, I got still time to take. So one of my colleague, Mr. my mentor, in fact, Yashwant Chaudhary, who just came from Switzerland at that time, he had this program. And he was working with Siva. I said, yes, he was enjoying this in wool. Nobody was knowing about industrial design at that time. I had a very hard time to convince my parents to know what is industrial design. Because that time no products were there, no mixers, and all these things were there. So I had to explain them what is the industrial design. So nearest thing was that I told him I had to design this bathroom, furniture, toilets, and hand machines and sort of thing. Then he said, why you have to go to Germany for that? I know very good plumbers here. He will tell you about it. So this was the stage. I said, I will just take a chance. I want to go there. Because my friends said that I had feeling about three-dimensional things. Because that time I did a number of exhibitions for industry. So he thought I should go there. So I went there for one year. I said, I'll get an experience. Then I'll come back. Once I go there, I thought it was not enough. Then I got some scholarship and sort of go. I said, I will finish my four years there, double it when I do. And then this is what will happen. Your destiny was different. So I think it looks like I have received more than 200 text messages. And we have other talks that are lined up. So I'm going to ask the last question. So what kind of direction and advice would you like to give to end designers? I think they should alert about what is happening all around them. They should also expose themselves to multi-level technological information. They should get more knowledge now. It's becoming product design is a knowledge product. So instead, just looking for the former or aesthetic aspect of design, aesthetic comes at the end, end result of all those things. So you should expose yourself to various areas of interdisciplinary subjects and sort of. Put more time on that because next generation products will be completely different. As you've seen, know that smart products, I think for that we should become also smart to design smart. So I think there's a lot of scope, challenges are there. And I think we should work. I wish I should have been 20 years younger today. I could have done that. Yes, thank you. Thank you so much for accepting our invitation. And you were here for the last four days. You've been observing. Yeah, I wanted to know this. What is the US? So everybody is talking about US. But I came to know what is the full form of US. So any advice for this conference to be more? No, that's what I said that conference should now take over more public service areas and sort of thing. Because in India, those are the things we are missing. We have to do so. We have seen a lot of people are dying just for our carelessness or lethargy and sort of thing. How you develop this, I guess this lethargy among those bureaucrats who takes the disease, who doesn't know, who are not interested to develop and innovate or anything. So I think maybe we should take that role. Just interact with them. If you do that, I think nothing like it. Sure, sir. We'll definitely take your advice. He has drawn it when he was student here. They used to do only that thing instead of studying here. So it's drawn by me. Thank you.