Product/Service Development

Daniel Pepper of Vayu in the U.S. will assess the value of using unmanned aerial vehicles integrated with existing healthcare supply chains to transport healthcare products and diagnostic samples in Senegal. Healthcare supply chains are critical for saving lives but are restricted by poor road infrastructure in developing countries. Unmanned aerial vehicles can overcome these restrictions and ensure rapid transport in temperature-controlled conditions.

Bulara Mpiti of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) in the U.S. will use the clinical sample transportation network in Lesotho to increase the efficiency of delivering viable vaccines to local health facilities. Most health facilities in Lesotho experience stock-outs of essential vaccines, which are caused by weak supply chains from the stores at district offices.

JÛnas Oddur J¥0nasson of MIT Sloan School of Management in the U.S. and collaborators will develop a more cost-effective method for transporting clinical samples between health centers and diagnostic laboratories in low-resource settings. In most countries in Southern Africa, sample transport is uncoordinated and leads to regular unnecessary trips, resulting in higher costs and long delays in disease diagnosis.

Ruth Betchel of VillageReach in the U.S. will create a hub to coordinate and track the transport of clinical samples from health facilities to laboratories for diagnosis in Mozambique so that diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis can be identified and treated earlier. Timely diagnosis of disease is also critical for preventing spread. In Mozambique, the existing transport system for patient samples relies on outside providers and is largely uncoordinated, unreliable, and inefficient.

Friso Postma of the Early Signal Foundation in the U.S. will develop algorithms to translate biological data from wearable sensors on pregnant women such as temperature and heart rate to identify patterns that predict the onset of labor, to help get women in remote settings to health clinics in time for birth. They will select an existing wearable sensor to semi-continuously collect information on multiple factors such as gait, sleep architecture, and blood pressure of 60 Belgian women in the third trimester in their home.

Inuwa Barau Ya'u of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) in Nigeria will use bracelets of different colors to symbolize the order of the five routine childhood vaccinations to remind families with limited education when to get their children immunized. Bracelets are low cost and easy to see on an infant, and are a common adornment in many cultures, including the Fulani tribe found in remote areas in Northern Nigeria. Vaccination coverage is low across Nigeria, with vaccine-preventable diseases still accounting for over 20% of infant mortality.