NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

The “Disruptive Innovations in Health and Health Care” competition from Ashoka’s Changemakers – that Julia blogged about in July – is now in its last stage: the voting!

There were about 300 projects that participated in this competition, ranging from microinsurance to direct selling and franchising to telemedicine. Nine finalists have been selected, including “Scojo Microfranchises Deliver Affordable Reading Glasses to the Rural Poor” from the Scojo Foundation, which is one of our recently released What Works case studies.There are other finalists that work in the BOP such as Point Care, which submitted the project “Better AIDS treatment for patients living in resource poor regions.” There’s also the Stanford University School of Design/ School of Medicine entry of “Respira!: An Extremely Affordable Device for Better Asthma Care.” All the projects are worth reading because they offer interesting solutions to many healthcare problems.

The Ashoka judges have done their part, and now it’s everyone’s turn to vote and decide which project gets the competition money. There will be three winners, and each will receive a $5000 grant. NextBillion encourages our readers to vote; the voting ends August 28!