The FastTraCS toolkit is designed for healthcare practitioners, researchers, and administrators seeking to identify opportunities to co-create solutions through technology development, process development, or other means.

The MicroSprint

True innovation depends on identifying the right problem to solve. To streamline the process of identifying opportunities for innovation, FastTraCS has developed a virtual, scalable approach to rapidly identifying impactful clinical problems—creating a foundation for unmet need definition, validation and new product development.

This approach eliminates the need for upfront clinical shadowing/observation and leverages experienced clinicians in a condensed, 1-hour activity. The specific goal of the MicroSprint is to identify top ranked problems for a specific theme, specialty or other constraint. Our team frequently uses this approach to identify areas which might be solved by a device or technology, though the MicroSprint framework can easily be applied to identifying problems or unmet needs in nearly any field and across many solution spaces.

MicroSprint Overview

MicroSprint Facilitator's Guide and Quickstart

View the guide for MicroSprint facilitators which includes an overview of the MicroSprint and its development, a breakdown of a session, rules of the road, and things we've learned in our own sessions.

MicroSprint Facilitator's Guide: Problem Discovery (pdf)

We have also designed a Quickstart guide for facilitating a session. It includes a checklist for recommended materials/resources and cheatsheet to ensure a smooth MicroSprint.

MicroSprint Quickstart (pdf)

View the MicroSprint PowerPoint presentation (pptx)

MicroSprint virtual needs discovery session

Watch a problem discovery MicroSprint in action:

This session was recorded as part of the 2-day Accelerating Health Care Innovation in North Carolina: Charting the Course conference hosted by NCBiotech and FastTraCS September 23-24, 2021.