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Up to 2.5 Billion People Need Glasses: Can This Hardware Innovation Deliver?
Roughly 25 percent of the global population needs glasses, but lacks access. The problem isn't cost: Affordable glasses are readily available in emerging markets. What's lacking are trained eye care specialists. The social startup PlenOptika is tackling that issue with a device called the QuickSee: a binocular-sized autorefractor that non-specialists can use to scan a patient’s eyes and produce an eyeglass prescription within seconds. Paul Scott, director of engineering for ASME, discusses the innovation, and the challenges and rewards of running a social hardware startup.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Health Care, Technology
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Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation: How Design Thinking Can Build Robust and Sustainable mHealth Ventures
Design thinking can help mHealth ventures develop their value propositions and potential impacts, meet customer needs, and shape business models that stand the test of time. In the final post in his series on making mHealth businesses sustainable, Khanjan Mehta provides a structured framework that helps these enterprises determine their viability, particularly in the early conceptualization phase.
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- Entrepreneurship, Health Care, Technology
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Social enterprise accelerator for health innovators kicks-off in Nairobi
The MMH Accelerator combines Ashoka’s expertise in social entrepreneurship with the pharmaceutical’s business acumen and knowledge of the healthcare industry.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Nine Ways to Make Money in mHealth: The Top Value Propositions from a Study of 234 Projects in Emerging Markets
Telemedicine and mHealth initiatives often struggle in emerging markets - yet researchers seldom focus on how these ventures can better develop sustainable business models. An ambitious study of 234 mHealth projects in developing countries attempts to rectify this problem. Khanjan Mehta at Lehigh University runs down the research, highlighting the nine most common value propositions it found.
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- Health Care, Technology
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Tata Trust’s FISE develops low-cost portable MRI scanner to take health services to rural India
In a statement to the press, FISE said that the 1.5 Tesla whole body MRI scanner can make MRI scans four times faster, compared to other scanners that are currently available in the market while consuming less power and being light weight hence easy to carry.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Health Care, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Press release: Vodafone Americas Foundation Reveals Winners of 10th Annual Wireless Innovation Project
$600,000 in total prizes awarded to SMART, cerVIA and ENVIsion Mobile for their promising mobile innovations designed to impact the global community in the fight against disease and financial illiteracy.
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- Health Care, Inclusive Fintech, Technology
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Hardware Innovation is … Hard: How These Entrepreneurs Overcame the Challenges
Compared with the creators of app-based products, hardware-focused innovators face a much more difficult and expensive journey, says Villgro CTO Arun Venkatesan. The resources and time required to perfect hardware iterations are larger, the lack of a mature ecosystem is a problem, and the buyer is often distinctly different from the user or beneficiary. Venkatesan profiles four hardware innovators in agriculture and health care, discussing how they worked through these obstacles.
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- Agriculture, Health Care, Investing, Technology
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Press release: Global Digital Health Index launches alongside World Health Assembly
Technologies such as mobile phones, tablets, remote patient monitoring devices, and sensors have the potential to save lives, extend the reach of healthcare services, and reduce healthcare costs – yet many countries face persistent challenges in integrating these technologies into their health systems at scale.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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