August 14th: The Last Day

Last day. Last hospital. We left early in the morning for Fortis, a gorgeous private hospital in Bangalore. They gave us a tour of their facilities which included a dialysis room, a pediatric out patient department, and their birthing rooms, called "Nest". These birthing suites were large and beautiful, and before each birth the hospital provided months of Lamaze classes and lectures by doctors to each couple.

They introduced us to an anesthesiologist that had led a normothermia campaign in the hospital that had significantly decreased the rates of hypothermia during surgery, and consequently surgical site infections. He was excited and optimistic about the future of my device, which was very encouraging.

Our flight wasn't until 2am, so in the meanwhile the prosthetics team returned to Saint Johns to work with some prosthetics and the hypothermia team took the time to meet and work on our deliverables. We then packed up and had dinner together at the hotel. The hotel was so accommodating to us- they let us check out at 5pm instead of 11am and stay around in our rooms until we left that night.

We got in the van at 8:30 and drove to the hospital, arriving around 10pm. It was the Indian New Year so when we checked in they gave us small gifts and took photographs with us. We went through customs and security (this took forever), and I might have gotten into a small disagreement with a security lady.....

Waiting to board until 12:45, we were absolutely exhausted. But we were so close to getting back. So we ate chocolate and tried to keep one another going until we could board.

August 13th: Philips & Narayana

After another early morning and another late start to the van, we arrived early to the Phillips Innovation Center. The center was gorgeous- multicolor LED lights pulsating and lots of shiny white surfaces. Huge perk- they had a coffee machine that produced coffee without sugar. We have been so overwhelmed by how sweet everything is in India! The sodas are sweeter, the coffee is sweeter, we even swear the bread is sweeter. We were on a sugar overload.

A member of the Philips team brought us to a conference room and we were served water, tea, and coffee as we waited for a formal introduction to Philips. They had provided us with a detailed schedule in 15-minute intervals. After this initial 15 minute introduction we were brought to their “Unicorn Room” where we were introduced to some of their newest innovations. At the end, they even let us play with Google Glass.

We ate lunch at Philips and then piled back in the van and went to Narayana Health, a hospital famous for its cardiac surgeries. This place does 15 pediatric cardiac cases every day! We got to see their PITU and it was enormous! Its actually the largest one in the world.

We ended there in the evening and returned back to the hotel for dinner. Sometimes the service was so crazy we could only find it comical. At our table they would serve the men first and give Lina and I the leftovers, so after the served us we would all have to redistribute it ourselves. They also resisted letting us order our main dishes before our appetizers came out. The poor other table had to watch us eat our appetizers and some of our dinner before they were served theirs, even though they had ordered before us. All in all, dinner took multiple hours, and the experience was a bit harrowing.

August 12th: Saint Johns Medical College

We knew we were going to love Bangalore when they offered to make us eggs at the hotel. We planned to leave bright and early, around 7:30 or so, but our driver never showed up, so we didn’t end up leaving until 9. When we arrived to Saint Johns we were met by the Excel Team, a group doing a program very similar to the Stanford Biodesign program but modified for India.

Patients waiting for treatment in the pediatric ward

They gave us a tour around the hospital and we ended in the NICU. Their NICU infection prevention procedures were more elaborate than those I had seen at Hopkins. We had to scrub, put on clean robes, and we couldn’t touch anything. They had three separate rooms within their NICU. One was for septic newborns, one for newborns requiring acute care, such as ventilators, and one for newborns requiring very little care, such as moderately premature babies. I got to speak with a mother practicing Kangaroo Mother Care with her newborn.

We then went for lunch at the hospital, getting to talk about our programs and projects while we ate samosas and chicken puffs. After lunch we went to visit some prosthetists for Jason’s project, and then while his team worked with the prosthetists a bit more, my team got to go to the post-natal ward and speak with some nurses who worked there.

In the evening, some of us grabbed some rickshaws from our hotel and went to a restaurant called Toit. At Toit we met up with my college friend Aman and were later joined by some of the Excel group and their friends. Toit was the first brewery we had seen in India, and we were very pleased to be ordering pizzas. Bangalore is called the Silicon Valley of India, and its easy to see why. The majority of people speak or understand English and the streets are filled with designer shops instead of the usual small shops. Interestingly, all of the motorcyclists wear helmets which is a huge contrast to what we saw in Hyderabad. We all felt like we had stumbled into some European city, except for the cows determinedly relaxing in the middle of the sidewalks.

August 11th: Hyderabad to Bangalore

We packed up the van with all of our suitcases, etc, having to literally climb over piles of them to get into our seats. It was our last day in Hyderabad. We drove a couple hours out of Hyderabad, searching for IIT Hyderabad, a famous university out in a rural area. Honestly, I don't know how anyone navigates anywhere as I have yet to see any signs indicating street names or addresses. Consequently, we got very very lost. We turned around multiple times, asking cow herders on the side of the road if they had heard of IIT. At least half of their directions sent us on a wild goose chase. We ended up actually getting directed to a different university and having to back track again.

I'm not sure how but in the end we made it to IIT, much later than intended. We tried to stuff into a small conference room, pulling in chairs from other rooms and constantly reshuffling as people came in. We traded off, giving presentations from about 11-2, at which point we broke for lunch. Our driver got lost once on the way to lunch. We ate with students and faculty, speaking about their research and our own projects. We then went back and they presented a bit more, but we had to stop around 3:30 or so because we had to drive to the airport.

We flew from Hyderabad to Bangalore that evening, not arriving to our hotel (the Ginger Hotel) until 10 or 10:30. We got in our rooms and went right to bed.

August 10th: Sunday Funday

We got started surprisingly early for a Sunday. Before you knew it we were packed in a van and headed to Charminar, which means “the four towers”. Charminar is a memorial that sort of resembles an Indian Arc de Triumph. It commemorates a plague that demolished the city many years ago. Charminar is located deep in the old city, which is the oldest part of Hyderabad and primarily Muslim. We walked around Charminar briefly when we arrived, but didn’t go in and look further since it was 100 rupees for foreigners, per usual. As a reference, its usually 5 rupees for Indians.

Charminar

Diviya led us to some local shops down the road, and all the meanwhile a cloud of people trying to sell us trinkets followed us. I spoke with a little boy, going into fifth grade, who, as he tried to sell me pearl necklaces, told me that his favorite subject was English (which was impressively good) and that in fact he was learning five different languages (this included Telagu, Urdu, and Hindi).

We then went to a palace around the corner. I was impressed that this huge gorgeous estate was hiding right there, a wall separating it from streets of small shops. The palace was gorgeous, with fountains and large flowering trees. We walked through exhibitions of photographs and objects owned by old royalty who had lived there.

We then drove back to a newer part of the city to have lunch. The lunch joint was sort of a 1950s diner meets street food. We had to go up to a little bar to order chaat dishes. The best part? The man who held the door open. He had this enormous dark mustache that was reminiscent of Colonel Mustard from the game Clue.

Diviya then brought us to this fancy shop with local clothing, many of the pieces all died by hand by locals. When we left we said goodbye to Lillian, who insisted that she had to get back to her job (weird), and we sadly piled back into the van. Akhila had rejoined our party and brought us to Shilparaman, a local arts and crafts market. We shopped around for an hour or two, getting constantly bombarded by “Hello mam! Come inside, just for a second!” as you tried to browse. Everyone was very successful, purchasing items from saris to wooden platters to tapestries.

On the way home from Shilparaman, our driver ended up getting in an epic show down with a security guard! We all gawked from the car as he threw down his hat and started fist fighting! We all speculated grand stories for what he security guard had said to illicit such a strong reaction.

August 9th: Babies, Biryani, and a Bash

While the rest of the group stayed at the hotel to work, I jumped in the rented car and went to Diviya's place. Her and I went to Apollo Hospitals for a 10am meeting in the NICU. We were greeted by a peeved neonatologist (apparently this is the only time in Indian history it was not okay to be a couple of minutes late) and some nurses. I showed them my device and tried to get some concrete feedback from them. Unfortunately soon after they had to disperse to meetings, but the doctor seemed very keen on getting the hat integrated into a post-delivery kit they give to all of the mothers.

He sent us down to meet with someone from the purchasing department. We waited in a room meant specifically for international patients. Apparently many patients come from Africa and the Middle East.

After meeting with the woman from the purchasing department we went to the store Mom & Me, a clothing store for babies. I inspected all of their baby hats, taking pictures of the prices and designs. I was surprised to find that the hats were pretty expensive, compared to the prices people had been quoting me.

Diviya and I went back to her house where her mother gave us snacks (which in India really means a small meal) and waited for the rest of the group to join us. When they arrived we went off to the Asian Institute for Gastroenterology to speak with a GI about NOTES (natural orifice transluminal surgery) in India.

Then, we went to have our most highly anticipated meal of the entire trip: biryani! Biryani (either with mutton or chicken) is a rice disk that is famous is this region. They brought us an entire platter full. We also tried a local dessert famous in this area called double ka meetha. It was bright orange and surprisingly rich. What was in it? Eternal mystery.

While most of the group went off to explore some ruins, Lina, Lillian, Fiona and I went.... to a local mall. We took a rickshaw (called an auto here) to the mall and Lillian brought us to where she buys her local looking clothes. We took over a baby changing room (trying to get into the normal dressing room seemed daunting) and tried on outfits for over an hour. In the end only Lina got something.

We then took another rickshaw to Lillian's place. She is staying in this gorgeous house with a Deloitte employee. Best feature of the house? The dog, Jane. This was the first pet dog I had seen in India. After a long series of barking to let us know they we were invaders, she flipped over on her back for a belly rub and started licking my toes. We were immediate fast friends.

Lillian they took us back to our hotel where we got ready and all went to a party an hour and a half outside the city. The party was stunning- an enormous mansion covered in lights with a huge backyard, catering, and of course a dance floor. We requested a bunch of American songs, danced without inhibition, and were the first ones to eat the snacks.

August 8th: IKP Knowledge Park

When we stepped out of the van, we were greeted with an enormous, open marble building. We had arrived at IKP Knowledge Park and were escorted into an air conditioned conference room. They gave us all individual bottles of water and placed little jars of cookies serendipitously around the conference table. The CEO of IKP gave us an overview of their group and brought up some important points on innovating in India. For example, she broke down the demographics in the different areas of India, showing us that we had to be conscious of where we were introducing a product. They served us all tea and coffee (which we used as an excuse to break open the cookie jars) as Carmen introduced MEP.

They then gave us a tour of some of their lab facilities. When we got back they were serving lunch, and oh whoops, first in line! As we ate curries and sandwiches, Jason presented, and then they started talking about other innovations they were working on. The servers, meanwhile, were distressed that I was trying to eat an apple without letting them cut it up. Eventually I was asked to present, which was great because the room was filled with people in start ups, running large studies with community health workers, and clinicians. We then got sucked into another larger discussion about gaps in healthcare that exist. Some of the recurring themes were chronic diseases (such as diabetes, etc), mental health, and neglected tropical diseases. Finally at 4:30 (we had been there since 10am) we called the meeting to a close. It took another half an hour or so before we were in the van and on our way (trying to get a group photo was like herding cats) and we didn't get back to the hotel until 7:30.

While most of the group went out to meet up with one of Lillian's friends from the Silicon Valley, Lina, Fiona and I stayed in to henna their hair. I painted it on, first trying to be cautious not to get it on my hands. This quickly devolved to the point where I was just scooping handfuls and massaging it in, sans gloves. As we waited for it to set we watched the Devil Wears Prada and ate "chicken soft noodles", our current bland obsession from the hotel.

In the end the henna didn't change their hair too much, but we have decided that both have a slightly reddish tint in the sun. Definitely worth it.