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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.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Health Care, Technology
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Failing to Scale: Fixing Common Missteps in mHealth Ventures
Telemedicine or mHealth systems have great potential to bolster fragile health care systems in the developing world. However, these programs often fail to survive beyond the pilot phase. A team at the Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship Program at Penn State studied 35 telemedicine and mHealth projects and discovered six recurring reasons for failure to scale. Program director Khanjan Mehta offers solutions to some common missteps.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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In Pursuit of Universal Health Care: Time to Take Public-Private Partnership to the Next Level
Public-private partnerships (PPP) are receiving increased attention for their promise to broaden developing countries' capacity to achieve universal health care. But though this attention is good, Dr. Naveen Rao of Merck for Mothers says we also need action. He outlines concrete steps that can make PPPs an integral part of national health policies and harness the local private health sector – not just big multilateral organizations, multinational corporations and NGOs.
- Categories
- Health Care, Inclusive Fintech
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Trans Fats Should be Eliminated Worldwide by 2023, W.H.O. Says
The World Health Organization on Monday announced a sweeping plan that urges governments around the globe to eliminate the use of trans fats, the industrially produced edible oil that gave birth to margarine, Crisco and other artery-clogging products that have been linked to millions of premature deaths.
- Categories
- Health Care
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A Simple Way to Improve a Billion Lives: Eyeglasses
More than a billion people around the world need eyeglasses but don’t have them, researchers say, an affliction long overlooked on lists of public health priorities. Some estimates put that figure closer to 2.5 billion people.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Portable, Reliable and Safe: Billions Need Anaesthesia – Partnerships Can Deliver It
When global crises rivet the world’s attention to a conflict or a disaster-struck region, people take notice and respond. But they tend to ignore the fact that 5 billion of the 7 billion people in the world lack access to basic surgery – and the safe anesthesia care necessary to facilitate it. Andrea Charters of Diamedica talks about the life-saving work doctors are able to perform using the company’s portable anesthesia machine – and the potential to cure the everyday disaster of inequality in global health care.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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Bending the Arc of Humanity – Effective Development of Exponential Technologies to Serve Mankind
Exponential technologies such as big data, the internet of things and artificial intelligence can transform lives in poor countries. But Akhtar Badshah – who led Microsoft’s philanthropic efforts for 10 years – highlights some risks alongside that potential. The main question, he says, is how to bridge the gap between those who quickly benefit from these technologies, and those who are left behind.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- agribusiness, Base of the Pyramid, business development, digital payments, education, entrepreneurship, financial innovation, financial services, fintech, global health, government, health care, healthcare technology, infectious diseases, poverty alleviation, public health, social enterprise, technology
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Soapply Initiative Funds Sanitation and Hygiene Solutions in Africa
While working in East Africa, Mera McGrew quickly learned that a simple act like washing hands with soap could prevent child mortality. Her initiative, Soapply, addresses the serious issue of clean water, sanitation and hygiene across the globe. With each purchase, the company funds up to $10 worth of impact through water, sanitation and hygiene initiatives and aims to leave a lasting positive impact.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care, WASH
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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