That’s right, our 2018 Cohort applicant cycle is over and we’ve got the best! Our goal at Innovations in Healthcare is to improve healthcare worldwide by supporting the scale and impact of promising innovations found around the world.
Every year our team dedicates a substantial amount of time and resources to source, scout, and recruit the best healthcare organizations from around the globe. As a result, we’ve identified, vetted, selected, and will be supporting eight growth-ready organizations, continuing to drive impactful work that ensures diverse populations have access to affordable, high-quality healthcare.
This year’s applicant pool represented global healthcare organizations operating in 67 countries, spanning multiple healthcare focus areas, stages of development, legal structures, business models, care delivery settings, funding mechanisms, market offerings, governance structures, impact metrics, intellectual property, management team compositions, milestones, and risks.
All that said, let’s meet our Innovators and find out why they stand out as the best healthcare organizations in this year’s application cycle. In alphabetical order it’s:
Headquarters: United States (For-Profit)
Operating in Country(ies): Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa, United States
Highlights: Technology, wearables, predictive analytics, patient monitoring, care delivery
Biofourmis was an exciting Innovator to evaluate especially since it’s at the forefront of technology and clinical integration. It utilizes wearable sensors for patients, predictive analytics, and a clinical interface to alert nurses of an impending negative cardiac event. Biofourmis is tackling the problem of hospital re-admissions and as a consequence, improving the quality of clinical care and reducing the overall cost of care, while maintaining good patient and clinical engagement. Biofourmis’ tech platform makes its innovation easier to scale than other patient monitoring system that rely heavily on phone, email, or home visits from trained clinicians. Despite it being a fairly young company, its presence in Southeast Asia marks it as an exciting organization to work with and support, particularly because of Duke’s regional presence and connections. Check out Biofourmis to learn more about their organization.
Headquarters: United States (Non-Profit)
Operating in Country(ies): Kenya, Myanmar, Uganda, Zambia
Highlights: Distribution, care delivery, financing, workforce development, local capacity building, government partnerships
Living Goods’ application and operation was a joy to evaluate as it quickly gave us an idea of how they solve challenges associated with healthcare access, affordability, supply chain, and health education. Their approach gives communities in the regions they serve a fighting chance at combating avoidable death and illness from diseases and other preventable ailments for as low as $2 per person annually1. Living Goods’ door-to-door operations provide a friendly, local, and very interactive platform for reaching members in the community. This Innovator recruits, trains, equips, and supports Community Health Workers (CHW) who earn a living through healthcare product / service sales and impact-linked incentive payments. To learn more about Living Goods please visit their website.
1 Living Goods website (https://livinggoods.org/).
Headquarters: Kenya (Non-Profit)
Operating in Country(ies): Kenya
Highlights: Care delivery, capacity building, community engagement, government partnerships
Lwala’s got grit! This Innovator is tackling two major problems that plague Kenya; (1) high rates of Maternal and Child mortality and (2) inadequate and underfunded health infrastructure and workforce. Lwala’s bottom-up approach enlists the support and participation of local government and community members. This aspect was very intriguing and we’re excited to see (and support) them replicate and scale this success to other regions, in and, beyond Kenya. See what Lwala is doing by visiting their homepage.
Headquarters: United States (Non-Profit)
Operating in Country(ies): Nicaragua, Uganda
Highlights: Care delivery, capacity building, managed growth, geographic diversity
Listen up everybody, OneWorld Health has figured something out, of which many are quite envious. They’re opening and operating sustainable healthcare facilities in two very distinct and challenging regions of the world. Not only has this Innovator figured out how to work in different cultural and regulatory settings, but also how to employ a business model that ensures their facilities are meeting community needs, all while reaching financial sustainability within 18-24 months after opening. This mission driven organization is out to provide affordable healthcare to communities that are caught in the service gap that lies between an inadequate public system and an unaffordable private system. Take a deeper dive and learn more about OneWorld Health.
Headquarters: United States (Non-Profit)
Operating in Country(ies): Nepal
Highlights: Care delivery, government partnership, holistic healthcare, open source EHR
There’s no better name for an organization than what it does for its beneficiaries. Possible Health is making it ‘possible’ for Nepal’s rural and poor communities to access high-quality healthcare without its services burdening customers with financial hardships. They are doing this with a ‘hospital to home’ approach, that’s supported by CHWs and their home-grown EHR platform, that solves many of the care gaps that plague the public health system. Possible Health’s holistic and patient-centric approach is supported by a strong partnership with the national government. Learn how Possible Health is making it ‘possible’.
Headquarters: Mexico (For-Profit)
Operating in Country(ies): Mexico
Highlights: Care delivery, specialty healthcare, bundled payments, financing, managed growth
Reina Madre’s thoughtful approach to identifying market failures and filling healthcare gaps by providing sustainable specialized low-cost women’s health services won it a place in our 2018 Innovator Cohort. This Innovator’s transparent and competitive pricing, culturally savvy, and differentiable services give expecting mothers access to affordable, high-quality prenatal and hospital services that would otherwise be unattainable in public facilities or cost-prohibitive in private clinic settings. Check out what Reina Madre is currently up to as it plans to deepen its footprint in Central Mexico.
Headquarters: United States (For-Profit)
Operating in Country(ies): Botswana, India, Malaysia, Mexico, United States
Highlights: Technology, POC Diagnostics, mobile health, specialty care, government and corporate partnerships, intellectual property
UE LifeSciences is doing something about it! This Innovator is helping to make breast cancer screening and detection quicker, cheaper, and more accessible for low-income communities that would otherwise not be able to access or afford care. Through their private and public partnership, this Innovator is equipping healthcare providers with a hand-held, non-invasive and radiation-free mobile health enabled device for rapid cancer detection. Check out what UE LifeSciences is up to as they partner with GE Healthcare to expand their global reach.
Headquarters: United States (For-Profit)
Operating in Country(ies): Angola, Bangladesh, Botswana, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Uganda, United States, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Highlights: Supply chain, logistics and support, technology, distribution
Lookout Amazon, here comes VIA Global Health! VIA Global Health is making waves in the medical supply, device, and equipment distribution market segment. This Innovator is helping to solve the issues associated with the fragmented global supply chain industry that precludes healthcare providers in developing countries from meeting the critical health needs of their patients. VIA Global Health’s value proposition is simple to understand, and though moving goods from manufactures to end users is not a novel practice, moving competitively priced goods in and out of developing markets is no easy task. See what VIA Global Health has to offer in your region!