Pop-Up Clinics

1) Flow mattered more than medicine

The single most important operational insight is this: One person managing flow and transitions created more value than another clinician.

That person did three things:

1. throttled intake 
2. moved patients from benches to doctors
3. controlled medication distribution

That is not a logistics detail. It is a structural role. In future language, this is the Care Flow Steward.

The fact that two doctors at two tables outperformed isolated doctors reinforces this. Care was happening as a system, not as individual encounters.

2) Triage is a skill, not a form

We learned that:

• forms were not filled correctly
• more training was required
• triage quality directly affected clinician throughput

This tells us triage is not a clerical task. It is a translation task between:

• lived experience
• structured categories
• clinical reality

AI will help here, but only if the human at triage understands what matters and what does not.

3) Privacy assumptions were wrong

The private room never being used is very important. It suggests:

• cultural comfort with shared spaces
• urgency over privacy
• trust being established socially, not spatially

This is a reminder not to import Western clinical assumptions into liminal environments. Privacy may be relational, not architectural.

4) Supply emergence is a real phenomenon

We observed something subtle but powerful:

• medicines and glasses appeared
• needs signaled themselves
• supply followed demand organically

This is informal supply chain intelligence. It means:

• communities already have adaptive networks
• the clinic became a magnet that activated them

5) The problem was not what we expected

We expected wound care. We did not get it. That tells us:

• outsider assumptions were wrong
• the visible suffering was different from the real burden
• this validates our instinct to analyze what people were actually seen for

This is exactly where AI-assisted aggregation will be powerful later.

6) Education artifacts outlived the clinic

The plastic cards being used as takeaways education for women's health and baby care is quietly huge. It means:

• people valued something they could keep
• instruction outlasted intervention
• women especially acted as carriers of knowledge

That is how care propagates in unstable environments.

7) Demand was bursty, not continuous

The demand curve matters:

• very heavy first morning
• rapid tapering
• by day two, no unmet demand

This strongly suggests:

• backlog clearing, not ongoing demand
• one day might be optimal
• diminishing returns after saturation

This is gold for future design and cost discipline.

8) Setup time was underestimated

Doctors taking longer to get ready is not a failure. It is a signal. It tells us:

• clinical readiness is its own phase
• pop ups need a “cold start” buffer
• the system must absorb human variability

AI cannot fix this. Process can.

9) The demographic signal is clear

90% women and children is not incidental. It means:

• women are the healthcare interface for families
• children surface systemic issues earlier
• men may be absent, working, or culturally disengaged from care

This has implications for design, hours, messaging, and takeaways.

10) We did not solve root causes

This pop up:

• relieved suffering
• did not change determinants
• functioned as interruption, not transformation

That is not a failure. It clarifies the role of pop ups in the system.