Great project for students to work on, they were challenged by the content.

Hello Mr. Haitas, Thank you for the opportunity to work with you on this project in a short period of time. We learned a lot about the healthcare device industry and how vital your business is for the end users, particularly the patients and medical professionals. We hope that we contributed value to your company with our deliverables. We wish you all the best!

It was a positive and very educational experience working with the employers of the "Importation of Medical Devices in Canada" project at Quadromed. The project offered a useful platform to implement Design Thinking practices and participate in applied research in an authentic, industry-grounded setting. Working closely with industry practitioners and stakeholders provided meaningful perspectives to the regulatory climate, operational constraints and potential opportunities in the medical device importation business. The Design Thinking process played a pivotal role in shaping the project’s approach. By following its core stages Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test we were able to generate human-centered solutions that addressed the specific needs of Quadromed’s stakeholders. The employer, Tom Haitas at Quadromed was very involved, communicative, and supportive during the project. He was responsive, provided timely comments, shared expertise, and were receptive to innovative approaches. The commitment to engage in the co-creation sessions contributed to the development of a feeling of co-ownership over the final project results. This project emphasized the importance of applied research to inform decision-making. Major research activities involved a search of Health Canada medical device regulatory framework to guarantee compliance, searching of industry standards followed best practices, and data mining through interviews, user survey as well as prototype testing. These initiatives led to evidence-based design choices, and increased the quality of proposed solutions (e.g. Empathy-based innovation, sequential prototyping and close co-design with Quadromed's team played a vital role. The involvement of stakeholders from the very beginning facilitated iterative refinements based on feedback, and collaboration led to a more efficient problem-solving and greater stakeholder acceptance. Some points for improvement included clearer definition of scope to avoid rework, more efficient time management to keep the balance between project timeline and stakeholders’ availability and sophisticated prototyping toolbox to accelerate the development. Overall, the experience of working on the 'Importation of Medical Devices in Canada' project with Quadromed was transformative. It offered direct experience of Design Thinking, increased applied research expertise, and presented a rationale for co-creation with industry partners. Experience knowledge competences thus acquired will certainly be used to direct future work career development.