Product/Service Development

This 18-month project aims to improve early childhood development (ECD) outcomes of 0-2 year old children in disadvantaged cocoa farming communities of Côte d'Ivoire, where most farmers live on less than $0.5/day. DMI will trial mass media as a model for taking high impact ECD interventions to scale. Engaging radio spots and mobile films in local languages will be used to catalyse a positive shift in parental behaviours.

We propose to use the Collaborative Team Approach (CTA) to spread the practice of the Sugira Muryango home-visiting program, an evidence-based intervention that offers active coaching of caregivers by lay-workers from the community trained in the intervention to promote early stimulation, play, nutrition, hygiene, non-violent discipline and responsive parenting, across the Nyanza district of Rwanda.

In this proposal, INMED will directly address the gaps in jaundice management by introducing the Bilikit, a comprehensive package of screening (Jaundice Ruler), quantitative diagnostic (Bilistick®) and phototherapy treatment (Bili-Hut™) innovations appropriate for the resource-constrained context. The goal will to be improve diagnostic and treatment capacity at downstream hospitals to avert treatment delay. CHAs will be trained to screen infants to better inform referral decisions.

The Augmented Infant Resuscitator (AIR) empowers health workers to achieve and maintain effective ventilation. It provides intuitive real-time, actionable feedback to birth attendants during ventilation. With SL@B funding, the team will complete the Product Realization Process (PRP) in partnership with Philips Healthcare vital for the global commercialization of the AIR training device. The team will demonstrate resultant impact on skills acquisition, retention and newborn outcomes.

The Pratt Pouch, a foilized, polyethylene pouch (similar to a ketchup pouch) designed and proven to safely store NVP doses, offers an innovative way to expand NVP coverage. Integrating this technology into existing services will simplify dosing and ensure all HIV-positive women have access to infant NVP. The easy-to-use pouches will empower women to immediately initiate NVP after delivery and encourage them to deliver in a health facility or bring their infants for postnatal care within 14 days.

Lack of fast, affordable delivery of blood profoundly restricts the number of lifesaving transfusions performed in the Dodoma region. We will use an autonomous Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) called Stork to transport screened and typed blood from a blood bank in Dodoma to peripheral health facilities, on-demand. In many cases, ground transport of blood would either be impossible or too costly using traditional means. Stork can already deliver over 1kg over 75km in less than 45 minutes at a cost of $10, outperforming all known alternatives.

In collaboration with the Rwandan Ministry of Health & National Research Laboratory, and our on the ground implementing partners, Nanobiosym will reduce HIV related deaths in infants by scaling up access to its novel POC nanodiagnostic platform by validating Nanobiosym's proprietary Point-of-Care Gene-RADAR® diagnostic platform's ability to measure HIV positive mothers' viral load thereby ensuring they are responding to ART and reducing their chances of transmitting HIV to their child in-utero, at birth, or during the breastfeeding period.

The SUSTAIN Package is a bundled kit of interventions which empower health care workers to efficiently monitor, provide care, and review care provided during the intrapartum and immediate postpartum period. The tools in this bundle (referred to as the Safer Births Bundle) are evidence-based and align with global guidelines.

The objective of the study is to evaluate the safety and feasibility of the Odon device, a a low cost, easy to use technological innovation, in assisting vaginal delivery in singleton term pregnancies during the second stage of labor. Interim evaluation of the device for safety and feasibility showed no major severe adverse events among women or infants enrolled in the study. The experience suggests that the device is easy to use and allows successful expulsion of the baby.

Diagnostics For All will develop a sensitive, low-cost, rapid, paper-based microfluidic diagnostic test to screen pregnant women for anemia, HIV, HBV, and syphilis, from one drop of blood. This antenatal care (ANC) test panel will ensure that women who attend ANC at least once are tested for the most critical diseases and provided results on the spot.  This ANC panel could improve maternal and child health outcomes for up to 31 million pregnant women in the developing world and their children.