Fellows

Andres Rubiano Escobar and Nancy Ann Carney are fostering a new consciousness and system for integral trauma care though MEDITECH Foundation. MEDITECH is a research and educational organization dedicated to developing improved trauma care systems in Colombia and Latin America. Trauma and injuries are the leading cause of death in the economically active population (12 years to 45 years) in Colombia and other Latin American Countries. Injury prevention and appropriate trauma and acute emergency care are required in order to decrease death and disability in these patients. MEDITECH educates at all levels—right from community first responders to advanced medical providers—and conducts clinical research and develops protocols of care for centers with varying levels of resources. The goal is to identify and disseminate the most effective treatments for trauma in low resource settings. MEDITECH will move to a new era of promoting development of systems of care, introducing leadership training for health care providers and developing sustainable business models for emergency care volunteer groups in rural communities. MEDITECH is creating a new context, moving ahead with health-related (education, research, technology) public and private partners to introduce new cost effective interventions, and developing successful pilot models that demonstrate a pathway to influence health policy in order to change the system. 

Starting in Pakistan, Asher Hasan is providing quality, private health insurance to low-income workers in the emerging economies through an approach that distributes cost and social responsibility among several stakeholders affiliated with low-income beneficiaries. The exclusion of women in the workforce in both developing countries and mature markets has resulted in not only a massive loss of human potential but also loss of human life - especially in emerging countries such as Pakistan, where millions of people continue to lack access to quality, affordable healthcare. It is estimated that there are 50,000 qualified female doctors excluded from the health workforce in Pakistan and over 300,000 female doctors worldwide who are not participating (transitionally or permanently) in the global workforce. To tackle these market failures, doctHERs has developed a digital health platform that matches the underutilized capacity of female doctors (who would otherwise be excluded from the global workforce) to the unmet healthcare needs of underserved communities. The Globalizer process has helped to refine our strategy to focus on 2 key issues: (i) how to accelerate sustainable demand for our telemedicine-based services and (ii) how to create more value for the female doctors we are reintegrating into the health workforce. The Globalizer has also reinforced our commitment to scaling our model via corporate, academic and public-sector partnerships. 

More than 70 percent of people in Indonesia consider memory loss as a normal part of ageing, rather than understand it as a dementia symptom. Dementia is a neuro-degenerative disease affecting the brain, emotion, executive decision, thinking, behaviour and the ability to perform everyday tasks. Dementia affects 50 million people globally costing the US$ 1 Trillion in 2018, 23 million people with Dementia live in the Asia Pacific region, with 1.2 Million of whom in Indonesia. The figure is projected to reach 4 million in Indonesia with an estimated cost of US$ 2.2. billion (Alzheimer's Disease International Report, 2016).  To prevent people from Dementia Alzheimer and enable people to live well, Alzheimer Indonesia (ALZI) that was founded in 2013 with the purpose to improve quality life of PwD and caregivers in Indonesia, initiated a "Do Not Underestimate Memory Loss" campaign to raise awareness about the 10 warning signs of Alzheimer. The campaign and movement have increased visibility of dementia awareness and influenced the public - across generations. It has also influenced community based support groups to remain active and participate in the society to reduce risk, remain active and pursue a healthy lifestyle. The movement has influenced The Government of Indonesia to launch a Dementia National Plan in 2016, local government of Jakarta declared the city as a dementia and ageing friendly city in 2015 through an integrated support system of "purple troops" that are committed to provide information and solutions for families with PwD in the city and ALZI has become the go-to-source on all things related to dementia, the caregiver support group started in Jakarta has now grown to 12 cities in Indonesia. After the Globalizer process, the strategy and approach Alzheimer's Indonesia will take on is the establishment of a platform that will connect users to information, solution and a network of Care-Navigators. This approach will empower families and improved system diagnosis, care and treatment for PwD through an integrated Care-Navigation based approach. The platform aims to support users (families of PwD and caregivers) with holistic solution centred around  a Care-Navigator to best take care of their daily needs to live a healthy and good quality life. A Care-Navigator will identify what services are required, at the right place and the right time, thereby working as health care system integrator and coordinator for the individual, the family and the health system. Additionally, the Care-Navigator's role will work as part of the broader service system, looking to what other support is needed and available to support PwD and families (i.e. respite care, etc). The milestone: 1 million families will have access to Care-Navigators (via the platform-app) in 34 provinces in Indonesia by 2025. 

The use of mobile gaming for the dual purpose of education and entertainment is a new idea in India. Hilmi Quraishi is using mobile telephony to bring important public health messages to the masses. He envisages the widest and deepest reach through the mobile phone, the computer, and the internet—the technology tools of the future—to combat various health and other critical social problems by delivering useful knowledge products in the form of games. ZMQ is a global ‘Technology for Development’ social enterprise which identifies critical social problems of rural, poor and unreached communities; develops practical technology solutions; and implements them at the last-mile as a sustainable systemchange model by provisioning timely information and connecting communities with life-saving products & services. ZMQ’s ‘for-profit’ arm provides consulting on solutions for governments, international agencies, CSRs, NGOs and other development programs, making ZMQ a self-sustained social enterprise. One of ZMQ’s key innovations is MIRA Channel - an integrated mobile channel on maternal and child providing health communication, progress tracking and connecting rural women with public health services thus strengthening last-mile health system. MIRA has scaled in India, Uganda and Afghanistan; and now scaling to Senegal and Sierra Leone. MIRA has already impacted more than a million women, children and adolescent girls in last 3 years and have saved over 15 million dollars to the state. Taking the learning from Ashoka Globalizer, ZMQ is going for government adoption of MIRA in 1 Indian state and national adoption in Uganda and Afghanistan. Globalizer also helped ZMQ create sustainable business models through digital stories and IoT toys.

In one of Joost Van Engen’s early jobs, Manager of Sales and Marketing at IDA Foundation, where he distributed low-cost medicines and medical supplies to international organizations and governments, he found that bureaucratic processes caused a frustratingly low percentage of people to actually receive these medicines, and those who did often had declining health as they waited.

In response, Joost founded Healthy Entrepreneurs (HE), an organization which addresses these problems as well as providing an opportunity for local community health workers to run their own health-related small business in basic medicines and essential health products within their community. Each entrepreneur makes a $500 investment including a loan they will pay back over 5 to 12 months, thus encouraging responsibility, buy-in, and ownership. The organization also equips each Healthy Entrepreneur with a tablet through which they can share videos with customers on health and sexual education.

In 2017 and 2018, since participating in the AHA! Globalizer program, Healthy Entrepreneurs has increased their impact from 1,500 entrepreneurs serving 3 million people to 4,000 entrepreneurs serving 6 million. They are currently active in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Ghana. This scaling has been partly enabled by the support from the AHA! Program. Joost has a Champion, Annette Jung, head of Southern Europe and Africa for Philips Capital, who acts as a strategic sounding board, and Joost has also received support from the Philips’ Mergers & Acquisitions team to raise the investment needed to scale.

In 2019, Joost was selected as one of five AHA! Collaborative Action fellows, and the Philips Foundation has agreed to a joint project to test expanding the basket of goods that Healthy Entrepreneurs offer, to include diagnostic tests and telehealth connection with a remote physician, thereby enabling last mile communities to access a higher level of health prevention and advisory.

As an emergency doctor in Pakistan, Mohammed Dalwai discovered an unattended patient in a remote hospital’s emergency room who had died though her injury could have been easily treated had it been identified early and triaged correctly – all too common in the developing world. He and Dr. Yaseen Khan co-founded two organizations in their native South Africa to make medical guidelines and procedures universally accessible. To increase impact, the Philips Foundation and Ashoka elected Mohammed as a Fellow in the Accelerating Healthcare Access (AHA!) collaboration which connects social entrepreneurs to the industry skills, resources, and networks needed to scale their innovations.  
 
Mohammed and Yaseen began their first initiative, The Open Medicine Project, by creating a mobile application which asks standard triage questions, calculates a score as vital signs are added, and lists additional investigations needed. It decreased triage error by 88% in under-resourced emergency rooms throughout South Africa. In 2014, the Open Medicine Project launched six applications, each tailored to a different disease area, used by 50,000 healthcare professionals.  
 
In 2016, Mohammed and Yaseen combined all applications and partners into Essential Medical Guidance (EMGuidance), South Africa’s first free comprehensive online and downloadable database of medicine information and healthcare practices. It includes drug dosages and location-specific treatment guidelines, with creative workarounds fitting an area’s resource availability. Due to word of mouth, over 100 new healthcare professionals join per week. EMGuidance secures funds by letting pharmaceutical companies sponsor value-driven content. With impact and strategy help from the Philips Foundation and Ashoka, EMGuidance is close to becoming the most widely-used medicine resource across South Africa. They are building partnerships with the ministries of health in Sierra Leone and Tanzania and are looking at expanding their scope to include medical machinery and devices. 

Through Stroke Action Nigeria, Rita Melifonwu and  Tim Okolonji provide practical advice and support that enable stroke survivors and their caregivers to cope with life after a stroke.  Stroke prevention and self-management services are also offered to stroke survivors and at risk individuals such as people living with hypertension and diabetes. Currently, 200,000 Nigerians suffer a stroke each year. There is a dearth of stroke units in Nigeria, and, most of the stroke survivors are adults in their economically active life span who are disabled, unemployed and live in poverty as a result of having a stroke. Through an Ashoka Globalizer strategy, Stroke Action Nigeria will equip and empower these stroke survivors as Stroke Entrepreneurs who are able to improve their own wellbeing, advocate for policy change, and are incentivized to improve their livelihood through operating a Social Franchise outlet as an accessible, affordable and equitable Stroke Support Service Shop. The Stroke Entrepreneur franchisees, in collaboration with other health workers, will offer services that enable other stroke survivors to be healthy, regain function, and become re-integrated into their communities. Stroke Action Nigeria will achieve this through CARES Nigeria Limited, a Hybrid for-profit trading arm that will operate the Social Franchise, and, offer Logistics operation to manage the supply and distribution chain. Philanthropic finance and Social Impact investment will be secured to help with the service development.