welcome to everyone joining us for today's webinar on strengthening health systems by supporting innovative health businesses i'm tara o'day health officer and private sector advisor at usaid and i'll be moderating the discussion with our four expert panelists this webinar is hosted by the usaid local health system sustainability project which works to build sustainable resilient health systems around the world i'd like to start by just giving a brief background on why we hosted this inclusive health access prize and provide a summary of the prize itself so despite many years of commitments from national governments and global health partners to improve access to and quality of primary health care vulnerable populations in lower and middle income countries continue to face barriers to achieve better health outcomes there is no single approach to achieving the goal of health for all but we do think that countries stand a better chance when solutions and approaches are locally driven and include the cooperative efforts of public private and non-profit sectors that deliver health care and public health interventions in a high-performing health system all people in communities have access to promotive preventive curative rehabilitative and palliative care of a sufficient quality to be effective and it does not lead to financial hardship high performing health systems provide health care that is accountable affordable accessible and reliable while the global community convenes to tackle the topic of universal health coverage and health for all usaid felt it was important to highlight the ingenuity and opportunity that comes when private locally designed solutions partnered with the public sector to promote protect and help maintain the health for all people with that in mind we designed the inclusive health access prize to recognize and incentivize scale up and expansion of these solutions within and to other countries we received nearly 400 applications from 68 different countries demonstrating that a robust private sector stands ready to bring solutions that enhance the health system and can fill critical gaps in health care when integrated with public services eleven finalists presented their innovative private sector solutions based on local contexts and needs that strive to make health care in their communities more accountable affordable accessible and or reliable finally we were down to five winning organizations all locally led and financed while some were just getting started others were more established but they all had approaches that were designed specifically to fill a need that they identified within their local health system their ingenuity went beyond identifying the problem and its ramifications across the system they use those observations and built on them by first understanding what is working within this how to build on those opportunities to enhance their success through the integration with existing resources their approach has demonstrated that private commercial sector small and women-owned businesses and civil society can provide new solutions that break down barriers to accessing health services and the result is a strengthened health system that can deliver better health outcomes at an affordable cost and help counteract the negative effects of poor economic conditions on health today we'll be hearing from three private sector health entrepreneurs who won usaid's inclusive health access prize they're going to describe their innovations which are making vital healthcare services more accessible to people and they will discuss the challenges they've faced in scaling their solutions and how they worked with the lhss project to co-design technical assistance to strengthen their businesses we'll also hear from lhss project seniors technical advisor for private sector engagement april warren who tell us about lessons learned from the project's work with our prize winner so that's it for me i would like to start with naked mobison the co-founder and ceo of mdoc in nigeria naika over to you thank you so much tara for the introduction good morning good afternoon good evening everyone i hope that you are all safe and well wherever you may be and to my muslim colleagues eid mubarak it's such a pleasure to be with some of my fellow usaid inclusive health access prize winners today to share with you our experience with lhss next slide please as tara shared i'm nekker mobisin i'm co-founder and ceo of mdoc a digital health social enterprise which leverages tech data behavioral science and quality improvement methods to optimize the end-to-end self-care experience for people living with chronic health needs in sub-saharan africa next slide please rihanna's a four-pillar approach working hand-in-hand with public and private sector partners to provide self-care support to people living with ncds such as diabetes obesity hypertension cancer comorbid depression and anxiety and have expanded to other health needs such as pregnancy given our preventive and promotive care focus how do we work firstly we leverage our omni-channel digital platform complete health to provide digital nudges and guidance to people on lifestyle modifications through our virtual coach-led multi-disciplinary care team secondly because mobile phone and smartphone penetration rates are not appropriate proxies for digital literacy we have created in-person what we call nudge hubs in partnership with community-based organizations and health facilities where our members can meet in person with coaches track their metrics such as blood pressure weight and more and learn how to use our digital platform and thirdly given people with chronic disease need in-person care from time to time we have created a directory of provider services and facilities essentially a google maps for quality care called navi health and we've partnered fourthly with the university of new mexico's project echo to provide teller education to providers to increase the likelihood that when our members go to them they're more likely to receive the right kind of care at the right time in the right manner all the time next slide please today we serve over 25 000 low-income members on our digital platform complete health across nigeria who on average make less than three dollars a day we have seen improvements in self-efficacy and behaviors with associated clinical outcomes such as average systolic blood pressure reduction glycemic control clinically significant weight loss and so much more next slide please so at mdoc presented with the everyday existential challenges of running an impact driven startup social enterprise that's focused on addressing the gaps in healthcare in nigeria we realized that we had overlooked one extremely important set of choices for our long-term growth and scale strategy which was organizational design we understood that organizational design choices are key to creating a foundation for success and really important for mdoc to develop a strong company culture which could help us effectively scale with ta from lhss provided by mpa global advisors we were able to develop an organizational strategy where we revisited and redefined redefined our organizational values collectively with our entire team and subsequently defined the behaviors and the competencies layered across a common global language that we all created through several workshops and sessions we created a recruiting toolkit fully aligned with our values and behaviors as well as the expected competencies as well as a performance management framework and a compensation philosophy set of set of pieces of guidance to help us effectively build the foundation to not only recruit but also on board support and motivate our employees and ensure alignment at all times with our vision and mission next slide please on the left side of on the left of this slide you'll you'll see the values that our team co-created some were already existing while others were new such as technology as an equalizer and curiosity to really push on our focus on problem solving our entire team valued the support immensely with one of our team members even saying that it was the group therapy we never knew that we needed we've learned a number of lessons from this and i'll share three key ones the first is as a founder of an organization relying heavily on the productivity of our team organizational design is our production process founders and leaders need to be just as obsessed with organizational design as we are with delivering impact-driven affordable and accessible person-centered quality services the second is that for those of us who leverage human or user-centered design principles in augmenting service or program delivery externally it's critical to leverage those same principles internally to co-create organizational strategy around culture and values with your teams to ensure full buy-in across the organization and then the last lesson is that the reality is this is a journey and oftentimes startup organizations that cannot afford a dedicated hr team need to identify individuals in the organization who can dedicate the time needed to spare ahead the implementation of the organization strategy and institutionalize the people process as needed and so much more to ensure that a lasting foundation is built for impact-driven scale next slide please the reality is that we've only just begun this journey of establishing a solid foundation built on our redesigned values behaviors and competencies currently we are implementing our performance management framework and we're also exploring a potential proposal with the mpa global advisor for advisor team for additional funding support for our implementation and at the same time we're continuing to recruit for scale using our new framework next slide please so i just want to say a huge thank you on behalf of mdoc to usaid lhss and the mpa global advisors team for the incredible support that we have had which will continue to have an impact on us and more importantly on the members that we serve for years to come thank you wonderful thank you it's impressive to see how how you use tech to fill the gaps and expand access to palliative and preventive services for chronic disease and also just noting how the ta supported your organizational structure and strategy redesign and hopefully will support the buying of your team and as you roll out a strategic plan for scaling your innovations so thank you again very much next i'd like to welcome adam khan he is ceo and founder of joko sante in senegal adama over to you hello everyone thank you so my name is adam khan and i'm from senegal and uh i'm the founder of uh i'm telecom engineer and the founder of the center next please uh well first of all um i will try to to explain what the custody is about so is a web and a mobile app that allows people to have the you know more access to to the medicines and and we're doing this by you know first of all having a secure application and this application can be used as a smartphone or with speakerphones and people so they collect points on their account and then they are able to buy the message in the official pharmacies you know by paying resource points instead of paying with uh with cash and they can connect with the points they can purchase it by themselves or they can be this points can be offered by their employers or by international ngos or by uh so so programs and they also have a network of of private pharmacy and they can choose where to go and when to go to buy their medicine and so what is important here is that so we have introduced you know a new way of of paying medicines and so by using those points so we make all those transformations uh visible and trackable on real-time basis meaning that so the internet into what they what they when they put their money so they can follow it and track every dollar they put on our platform and so it allows you know the money internet for help to go effectively next place so our solution so has been awarded many many many times we can say that maybe we are one one one of the most awarded african startups and but so we face faces many difficulties so to grow so to scale up and uh so we were wondering why because we suppose we had some good identification with the prospective investors and uh so stages still do not invest in our solution and we were really wondering so why we are so successful and we cannot scale and uh so this technical assistance to put light you know on all you know our hidden problems so we went through and so a capacity building so a business assessment and a broad marketing market analysis and we also built you know scaling strategy with with the advisor and uh for uh deliverables so we have a marketing deck that we share now with our partners and our prospective investor next uh [Music] the main takeaways from this technical assistance so is that now we know that so we must focus on our business and and that's why people you know were not very keen to invest in our startup because we were you know perceived as just like an ngo and and we know that so now we have to focus also on our business model and to try to be the you know so to have a business so where people can put their investment we also that is that we need a formal advisory board because people you know we so we had many uh so renowned professor that but they come and go they don't stay in the team and they you know so we know that it is very important to have a formal uh advising board that people who can say and then accompany us for a long time and we know that also somehow so long long term strategy so they required investment in our business and also in our app because our app if we want to scale so our app need to be more secure and and so and now our new philosophy is that so we will wait to scale and then we'll be back to our social impact mission so we'll be able to reconcile the business and end the social impact mission next and uh so so you have identified your many uh next steps and many new revenues during this ta uh so i'm gonna talk about just the three so you see on the screen so the first of all is a direct international remittances uh so for that so we need to invest in building relationship with the diaspora work abroad in europe and in the us mainly and also in africa because there is also usually in in africa so the second one is about you know so so using a tool we have in our platform but we never used so it is a supply chain uh uh your platform so so we hired it already in our platform and now so we need to market it because we see that people they did it especially so the some of the procurement platforms of the ministry of health in every country and so and so and the third one is about the educational incidence management so for that we need to expand our product list and save the list and also test it in the real time and uh i can say to enough that so we are about so finally closing a deal so we on maybe uh in one month we'll be able to do it on the real next please so we'd like to thank the university team and the app team and also so our our advisor from dhp so it was really really really interesting and we have really changed our our mindset now we know that so so we must be sustainable so to survive thank you so much thank you adama and thank you for sharing your innovative digital app to increase access to quality medicines i really appreciate you sharing the challenges you faced in achieving scale and also the priorities that you identified from the ta process including the need to focus on your business model and scaling reconciling that with with in the end your mission so thank you again for sharing our next speaker is conrad tanku he is ceo and founder of gic spaces and we'll be talking about jig med welcome conrad over to you thank you very much tara hello everyone i'm so happy to be taking part in this webinar to share on the wonderful mentorship and guidance we obtained under the lhss program and thank you all for joining so i'm conrad thank you founder and lead innovator at cheek med next slide please so a little background of what we do at geek med our vision is actually to provide universal access to breast and cervical cancer care for women living in rural and underserved communities especially and to achieve these uh we have developed a series of medical technology innovations um made up of a smart digital microscopy system a smart speculum a fine needle biopsy device and a telemedicine platform and these technologies enable medical specialists who are present almost entirely only in big cities across a few big cities uh to be able to remotely screen and diagnose women in rural communities and all these occurring at the point of care then we go a step further to provide treatment uh for early-stage cervical lesions at the point of care through a mobile treatment unit so we actually implement our solutions in partnership with health centers and clinics present in target communities using these health facilities as the main implementation sites and using their frontline nurses whom we train as the main implementers of the project at the point of care so since the beginning we have been able to uh work with over up to 23 health centers up to now and impacted over our 16 000 we mental date next slide please so we received a huge technical assistance on the lhss project uh which helped us to do a complete autopsy of our organization uh first identifying our biggest pain points and weaknesses then it helped us navigate the process of obtaining those appropriate solutions so initially we face the problem of uh properly implementing our venture due to the fact that we are stuck on the staff and lack some technical expertise which could help us manage certain tasks faster but with a technical assistant we were able to better define each team members role as well as define various kpis which has led so far to improve the efficiency and output so um secondly we also faced a challenge in monitoring partner health facilities whose impact we noticed progressively dropped following initial launch and implementation individual sites so there was the need to keep them constantly motivated towards the venture uh we were able to learn from the successes of similar ventures uh from africa and all around the world and bringing in better strategies to improve these partnerships and ensure continuous productivity from panda hospitals and thirdly we had the difficulty tracking and implementing lessons learned from initial pilots which we carried out from different sites and thanks to this technical assistance seal we obtained an operations manual that supports our facilities learning replication and scale of our venture to new sites next slide please so we learned a lot from this process but let me share with you a few uh of the most pertinent points so first thing uh is that we notice we use evidence in the form of maybe published research for example to showcase the impact of our venture this can facilitate the increased integration and acceptability of our venture to new sites and also it can help to secure more partnerships from big organizations that can help us easily scale and bring our venture to new sites and secondly uh we learned that conducting pilots and documenting feedback and lessons learned in a company documents such as an operations manual can improve our business model and enable easy understanding of all of all concepts especially for new team members and new partners thirdly we learned that if frontline held workers who are actually the key players in the implementation process for our venture if these frontline nurses are well motivated they will do better promote our services and guarantee sustainability of the venture in the long run and lastly following the landscape surveys we understood that we can leverage on our current technology and also integrate other diagnostic procedures to create more impact through our venture next slide please so uh good thanks so for our next steps uh we plan on in the following months conducting uh clinical trials in partnership with msa episode uh to build enough evidence of the health impact link to our venture uh we also plan on securing administrative clearances at national level with our ministry of public health and also move an extra step for getting some of our technologies fda registered and obtaining cmark as well and we will also progressively um continue establishing partnership with health facilities both in the public and private sectors which will serve as a foundation to enable us easy skill adventure and take them to new sites and lastly i will be leveraging on our existing technologies to target new diseases and uh thanks to a partnership with ingolstadt university in germany uh who have some of the uh students currently carrying out some master stasis on this part of the venture uh we believe by the end of this year we'll be able to divers if i offer and create more impact in terms of uh healthcare especially at the base of the pyramid level next slide so uh in a nutshell uh we are emerging with a more solid foundation for our venture to grow uh a better implementation model uh which will facilitate scale and again thanks to this technical assistance we are now on track to create the impact we desire and contribute to ameliorating healthcare in our context especially at the base of the pyramid level so thanks a lot for listening and joining this webinar and looking forward to the discussions thank you conrad uh for sharing your innovation that strives to provide universal access to breast and cervical care screening and treatment and collaboration with public sector health centers in rural areas i also appreciate your comments on the impact of the t ta on your organizational structure the partnership monitoring and also about strategic learning so thanks for that i would now like to ask april from lhss to speak more about the technical assistance to the inclusive health access prize winners april thank you so much tara next slide please so i want to start by giving you a brief overview of our process for delivering ta we had about one year for this activity and so we worked to first assess needs together with the ihap winners asking them about their top challenges and priorities and then together we co-designed ta plans that focus on one primary need given the sort of short time frame but we also included secondary areas of support that had come up in our discussion we delivered ta through a mix of project experts as well as external partners that we identified that had unique skill sets that met the winner's needs and what i really want to stress is that the winners here were partners and essentially our customers throughout this process so in some cases they interviewed the consultants to work with them before we contracted them in other cases we changed consultant deliverables midway to ensure they were really going to be responsive to winner needs so it was really a true partnership because we wanted to make sure that what we developed in this short time was going to be useful and would outlive our engagement next slide so what did we learn from this process we actually learned a lot more than this but we have more of that coming soon in our report and learning briefs for now i'll just share a few key lessons so the first is that a demand driven and flexible approach is central to effective ta our focus on acute and individual needs as defined by the winners really helped facilitate close collaboration and engendered ownership of the ta process and outputs by the organization and then flexibility was really a key success factor that was identified by both the winners and the ta providers as the ta providers learned about the winners businesses they were able to kind of adapt their support approach to meet their needs second was that adapting to 100 remote ta in response to copen 19 prolonged rta delivery process but enabled broader engagement so going fully remote led to some delays we made some changes in rta plans for example it also took ta providers a little bit longer to build rapport with winners and that's to really fully understand their business models their team team dynamics organizational challenges you know it's not easy to the first thing is first time you talk to someone on the phone to tell them about your your deepest challenges but the unexpected benefit that we found was that full teams from the winter organizations were able to participate in these ta sessions and that was a result both of using virtual platforms as well as holding shorter meetings over a longer period of time third and upper right external business assessments are very valuable and can shape an innovative strategic direction so winners shared that what they found most useful about rta was receiving external expert examination of their business models and operations and then strategic guidance on how to move forward this process gave them the opportunity to take a step back from day-to-day operations and really question some of their business model assumptions and finally private innovators value support rooted in global best practices and opportunities to learn from peers and network so while our primary ta integrated global experiences and learning because our ta providers had had the chance to work across so many different contexts we had structured our networking and peer-to-peer learning support to be much more demand driven and ad hoc and we ultimately didn't receive that many requests from the winners for this so we think that future initiatives might consider intentional integration of networking and peer-to-peer exchange you know at regular intervals to ensure that busy entrepreneurs can take advantage of these opportunities next slide so through our ta and learning process we also gathered some insights on the challenges that private innovators face to scaling and supporting health systems goals the first is that access to finance is the primary barrier to scaling up innovators health services the winners describe having limited capital to allow them to pilot innovations to learn and adapt to hire people and to invest in entering new markets and this is a common challenge among private innovators second is that insufficient number and quality of human resources impedes the ability of private innovators to achieve sustainability and scale so private health innovators have lean teams they often have gaps in their organizational structures or team members that are serving two roles at once and they face challenges attracting talent and competition from global development firms able to offer higher salaries there is that balancing business sustainability and health impact is challenging for health innovators i know that many in the public health space often voice the worry that private companies focus too much on profits but rta providers share that they have the winners focus a little bit too much on health impact as well as some of the technical aspects of their solutions rather than how they were going to make their business sustainable and finally limited visibility of private health innovators constrains their ability to forge the partnerships they require to scale while ihap winners offer these really unique solutions that have the opportunity to expand access to essential services in their context they're still relatively unknown to key government officials and other important stakeholders and when they do work with government they often interact at lower levels of government like district health offices and local public health facilities um so it's kind of an inefficient way to get to scale with the government next slide so i want to wrap up with three overarching recommendations the first is that given their challenges with access to finance and visibility supporters should seek to grow the networks of private innovators making introductions across the financing and partnership spectrum considering ministry of health contacts investors usa admissions philanthropic funders and others the second is you know we need to provide technical support that private innovators can't find somewhere else these are small stretch teams and we want to make sure we're making good use of their time which in turn ensures good value for money for funders demand driven and participatory ta really ensures that support is integrated into the organization's team and priorities and that the right people make time to engage and then finally even though it's important to be demand driven external assessments by experts are really useful we saw this both through the organizational capacity building assessments that we facilitated with each winner organization as well as the initial diagnostic phases of all of our primary ta these external eyes and questions can really help innovators see and address issues that are impeding their dual health impact and sustainability goals next slide so i just want to wrap up by thanking all of our technical assistance providers a lot of different firms and individuals were involved in the support and next slide thank you to all of you for joining the webinar and look forward to the discussion right thank you april for sharing lessons learned from this ta activity especially concerning the demand driven approach and the co-designing ta for a balance of i think both the tailored support for individual needs and also addressing some of the common challenges for the winners the poll is now open um the poll is now open for your comments and feedback on the webinar so please do take a moment to to provide some feedback we appreciate that and we welcome your questions i believe the slide is there to show um how to ask questions in the chat box and um i would like to encourage our audience to submit those questions through that meet those means and we want very much want to encourage your participation in this discussion so just to kick it off our first question this one is for nika if you could please talk about how your work how you're working with the public health system and what is one thing that the government can do to help you achieve greater impact thank you thank you tara um so in terms of the government the reality is that our government our partnerships with government are critical uh to really help us provide that or create that connected ecosystem that facilitates optimization of holistic support for people and so we work with government across kind of three major ways uh firstly we're on federal ministry of health and state ministry of health technical working groups related to ncds and law and then the second is that healthcare facilities see us as complementary to the existing healthcare system because we focus on self-care support and we focus on providing it largely digitally or through this hybrid approach that i highlighted before and so we worked directly with public facilities primary care centers secondary hospitals helping to directly take pressure off the system by providing digital self-care supports that more or less focuses on education and prevention enabling them to then focus on other areas it's many times we try to ensure that we're aligned even in terms of the messaging that we collectively provide patients and then lastly we very much focus on health education of providers themselves um we train health care workers throughout partnerships with the university of new mexico project echo as well as the healthcare leadership academy of nigeria and through our virtual tele-education sessions to date we've had over 80 healthcare facilities receiving training through through this model and so when it kind of comes to the one thing that would help when it comes to government i could list a whole a whole number of elements but i'll i'll prioritize one and the reality is that um you know covid i guess one of the few positive things about kovid is that it has upended the notion that digital can't digital health can't work um literally overnight and um and so the government has done a lot i think around you know investing in telehealth but i think that it would help if um our government really focused on investing in creating kind of that enabling ecosystem for telehealth to really flourish and scale and i would say this not just for nigeria but really across africa so that it's accessible to all we have amazing smartphone and mobile phone penetration rates across people across women um but but we need a lot more to ensure that all people have access to support and care through mobile phones in fact some countries have implemented zero rating for health websites meaning that accessing these sites from a data standpoint is free and how can we how can our government potentially support areas like that um because it would not only help the patient population access preventive promoting and palliative care but also help our healthcare workers who we have found have such a thirst for quality education but who have uh issue issues in terms of um barriers to access sometimes just because they don't have um the money for accessing data for their phones or laptops so even just focusing on that as one element of creating that enabling ecosystem would help us and so many other players in this arena tremendously all right thank you thank you for that answer um the next one if we could ask for conrad if you could please talk a little bit about um or share an example of how the technical assistance was demand driven or adapted to meet your needs so a little more details on how that process went thank you so much organization centered on an organization focused so it was uh far different from the i mean what you could find in some sort of incubator accelerator program such a such that they really have a pre-established program where you get in as a startup or you're getting as a venture and you first have to talk about your problem talk about the marketing i mean you follow a particular curriculum this was ideal in such a way that every organization was treated differently we had to first of all go usually understand our pain poisoning select the most pertinent which um experts will come in and brainstorm or giving their ideas and propositions and help us move from one step to the other so we actually use them alternates and using them that's why we're on a task so it means it means a lot it means um low property is low impact and low output for direct diverse foreign and we had a difficulty synthesizing all this feedback into a unique model where we could say okay we are scaling this approach and secondly we had noticed uh over our time that there was a progressive decrease in the output of our partner health facilities after we did an initial launch for example um when we get in contact with our facility and train and this we usually organize our extending and 500 150 percent per day to get screened but progressively after that we discovered the number of women presenting in these facilities to get screen dropped over time uh at the beginning we thought it was a problem of communication and sensitization but with the technical assistance uh we were able to dissect and detect that it was at the level of the health facilities and the actors themselves was the nurses and on this we had to using putting strategies with inputs from some experts on how we could better um steam it under this would you be able to turn off your video just for a moment so we can hear you better oh can you hear me now uh yes if you if you turn up your video i think it helps improve it thank you oh very great so yeah um so we i mean we work with experts and we were able to detect that and uh with the few trials based on recommendations we could get to a standard where um we've got the right formula to keep the partner health facilities and their nurses up to date and more motivated towards the project so this has been a huge step a huge input for a venture and uh i mean integrated into our operations manual it's um a strategy i think we can easily scale and it's going to create the impact we really desire great thank you very much there have been a few a few questions on finance uh so maybe if the panelists could please speak to the revenue generation models that they use and um and and how you're financed especially if they are you know raising capital or if they're subscription based and things like that we can just go through each of each of the winners so start with adama please and then go to um neka and then cornrod thank you okay thank you so interesting so we financed our first uh months and years from csr actively made that so private uh enterprise in senegal so they found that our our project idea was very good and then they uh and they just put money so first of all to build build the apps for the possible version of the of the app was fully paid by uh by a private uh by a local mobile local mobile operator and so on our business model so our so our revenues they come from you know so we take five percent you know from the from the fund so the ngos or so the foundations and they put on our platform because so like i already explained so we allow so the ngos and and the foundation and the health association so to put so to buy points on our platform and then to give those points to their targeted population so that so those population can go to the pharmacies and buy the methane and and with our platforms they can follow you know every dollar spent on so so they have a real-time basis and statistics on their own or their funds and uh so our business model so was to take five percent you know from those points and what we have seen that so so that so uh so for people they just you know make trials they don't put you know a huge amount of money and that's why so this model was not very sustainable and i must say that also so we had won many prizes you know for five years now and all the the cash from those piles was put in uh you know in our activities so to make it uh sustainable thank you um so so when it comes to us at mdoc uh from a business model perspective we are b to b to c um so we have contracts with businesses that allow us to support provide self-care support uh to their populations and then where b2c now um if you kind of look at us over the last few years we've been primarily funded through just bootstrapping um we've been fortunate to receive grants from from funders who are willing to invest in non-traditional startups and also awards um such as the inclusive health access prize as well just as adama has highlighted um and then a lot taken all the the revenue that we've uh generated and plowed it back into our organization i'll say that um we've been intentionally slow about um focusing on vc um funding yet but we are planning to raise our seed round q3 q4 and we've been intentionally slow because we are so focused on impact i think april made a great point that um so many of us are so focused on impact that uh you know it's it's sometimes it's hard to uh you know link both impact with the business model uh but we we want investors that understand that healthcare on this continent is so difficult it's complex um and are willing to work with us and be you know not just finances financiers but people who are willing to work with us to to create what i guess help us achieve our vision um of becoming a scalable business that is able to provide low-cost quality care to low-income populations that ultimately is not reliant on grants i mean there are very very very few examples in across the continent today um and for us i mean this is one of the most critical we want we we want to demonstrate that this can be done on this continent hence our reservation uh for the last couple of years we really wanted to get our model right we wanted to be able to show that we could have impact on population health outcomes we wanted to be able to show that there was truly product market fit that there was demand we've been able to do that and we're just teeing it up so that we are completely investor ready for q3 q4 great so uh for us um i mean we have a similar pathway like um like the others at the beginning we had a big trap and uh along the line we were lucky enough to get um a series of grants to help us stick the venture to to to uh for a level and of course it's as as i mentioned it's very very difficult especially for health care startup that is transit creating to get uh investment in the form of angel investment or vc funding at the start base uh usually a lot of question marks and a lot of fear i mean uh i mean on a part of investors it's it's really a lot of reluctance in that domain uh great now in terms of our business model we first of all have a unique implementation model what we do is that we provide all our technologies uh all consumables uh required as well as um training up to the panel health facilities free of charge so for no upfront cost and then we then engage in some sort of revenue sharing scheme when women get screened uh through our technologies so uh yeah that's that's actually our model so we get these health facilities they get everything for free the training for free access to training platforms are on-site uh training for free technology is for free and then uh we go into a revenue sharing model oh thank you to everybody for for that response those responses here's a question for everybody if you could also could you share to what degree the winners were able to exchange views and learn from other startups each other or expanding health businesses are there enough forums for these exchanges i asked maybe april if you could talk about that from the ta perspective and then over to um adama naka and conrad thank you sure thanks so this is one of the lessons i was trying to kind of point out as something that we could have done better you know we did offer kind of based on the winners interest we offered a session on working with usaid and usaid implementing partners and in that session we had some representatives from usa but we also had a social enterprise in the health space from kenya who had worked successfully with some usaid implementing partners and diffid among others so we did give that opportunity but i think my experience in the past had been that it's hard to get you know when entrepreneurs are busy to get them to participate in these networks and just kind of organically do learning exchanges and it's hard to make time for those so we had just thought that you know if they ask for it we'll we'll give it to them or if they want to be introduced to someone will do that um but i'm sure i think that that kind of pull approach was maybe um two hands off so we'd love to hear from from any of the winners that have thoughts about you know do you guys have access to ways to interact with your peers and learn from others across you know across the globe or is that something that that it needs to kind of be created just if anyone has any thoughts you don't all have to yeah i'm happy to um jump in so so entrepreneurship is lonely uh being an entrepreneur running an impact uh driven social enterprise i believe is even lonelier um and and so i do think despite us working 24 7 around the clock um i do think it's important to have um those forums where we can share and learn um with each other i think they're actually critical when we i think just even in talking about the winners when we um you know at the launch we all uh or some of us were able to uh uh be present physically at the launch in new york and that was incredible um just having the ability to share with each other share our vision share our challenges learn from each other uh so i i definitely think um there's there are opportunities to you know leverage digital to kind of facilitate that exchange um and and i i can also see how on the other side it might be really tough because you know getting email responses from us because you know because we're doing five million things may be really difficult but i found that when um those facilitated learning exchanges or platforms exist they can be incredibly helpful to us you know i highlighted earlier that our team said um having this the lhss support from mpa global advisors was like group therapy and honestly sometimes it it's so hard doing this work um that just knowing that there are other people who are out there who are struggling with the same struggles you have but may have come up with the best practice or an idea would be great but my only caution is um i think at the same time i have seen forced learning platforms where an expression i'm going to be frank you know in the development world where it's you know all of us are private sector enterprises trying to figure out what our value proposition is what our sustainable business models are um and so not in this form but in other forums there have been areas where you know um almost artificial networks are created of people who are actively clearly competitors um and so i think it's understanding and i think being humble about understanding what that environment is understanding um you know what potentially shared needs are despite that um you know despite the enterprises being competitors and building on that and trying to understand that and then building on that to facilitate the learning um because sometimes it can be difficult um when we've been in situations where founders or other organizations haven't understood uh you know that there is some competitive element and i would say this cuts across ngos and for-profit organizations uh that are all you know still trying to deliver impact uh okay so i'm gonna jump in so i think that so the winners have um so what's up group so and we created so in new york so uh so when we met in new york and i think that so some information have been shared in the in this group so we must say that so it is not frequent and uh monica just just pointed out so maybe we don't have enough time so we are all trying to survive in our own environment and that's why maybe it is very hard for us to um so to share more um but [Music] this question is raised i think that so maybe after this uh workshop or something so we'll try to so improve our uh so our extended because it's uh it's very important so i i must associate that so here in senegal so we try to uh so to so health startup association and i was so elected princess but we just met twice and then you know people because people so you know in africa you know for meetings and so and so but uh so it is a good point and maybe it is a path to the expert thank you just to just to chip in something right on uh on the importance of collaboration uh an example for my context especially i give an example right you're building a health startup a mobile house startup in cameron for example and you don't have we don't have any national um policies on data privacy in healthcare or our validation will be validating some such concepts or you go i go a further step if you're developing the hardware medical device we have no policies no organizations no bodies in place to certify what you're actually doing you must go outside and going outside is actually collaborating people doing something similar to what you're doing uh to get advice to have the right pathway to have the right connections and right networks to um i mean how to validate what you're doing or know the best strategies to better implement uh what you're doing and i give another simple example say one of our hardware products um it's been certified and validated in cameroon for example i bet if we get to nigeria tomorrow um that validation certification means almost nothing because they have their own process if you get to kenya it becomes something else because they have their own process but i give an example of something we've learned and when technologies come from outside and they are maybe fda registered or fda certified they have more value being implemented and they can easily implemented in our context compared to things which are certified locally so um such networks and um interactions to give you an insight on things like this can really facilitate you to i mean especially your early stages to get new ideas very fast and adopt practices that can help you better implement your project and especially skill especially in the sub-southern african context great thank you for that um i think we have time for just one more question uh here's one from earlier on uh back over to you conrad could you share what strategies you found that help motivate about that being one of your challenges okay great yeah yeah so um i mean the first thing we discovered is that um more motivation was was one of the factors so we had to re define our business model our revenue sharing model in such way that they get more motivated and secondly in order to make them adhere to the project and keep on using our technologies we have to find a way um to diversify our technology offer i give an example we are bringing a digital microscopy system there where they can capture slides of breast cancer for example but these as well can be used to uh capture and analyze the regular slice for malaria or from casino parasitic infections so if they can use the technologies as well in their routine activities they're more motivated to use these technologies and thirdly we had to um uh go a further step to give them a free and open access to our e-training platform so that they can get continuous professional development courses and also give them a direct link with uh health experts where apart from activities linked towards the project they could interact with medical experts who are present in cities and have one or two advices whenever they need so it was actually increasing gear remuneration and diversifying our technology offer in such a way that they can use it for their routine workflow and in such a way they are more attached to the project and they can better implement fantastic thank you thank you for that answer um i think we're just about out of time this has been a really great discussion i want to thank thank um all of our prize winners and presenters today for taking the time to share and um i would uh like to thank everybody the participants for joining the strengthening health systems by supporting innovative health businesses webinar and for engaging with such thoughtful questions i'm sorry we couldn't get to all of your questions and i do hope everybody has enjoyed the webinar we'll be sending out a recording of today's webinar next week so it will come to your email for those who registered for it thank you again to all and i wish you a wonderful day thank you
