Weekly News Roundup
News, Events and Observations about Health Markets in the Developing World
On Monday, CHMI participated in a Twitter chat about health care solutions that have the potential to be applied in communities around the world. In case you missed it, find a wrap up of the #SocEntChat here.
PROGRAM NEWS
Shelly Batra from Operation ASHA authored a blog post that was recently featured on the World Bank’s Development Marketplace blog. In the post, she discusses Operation ASHA’s unique partnership with Microsoft Research to develop biometric technology – in this case, portable finger print scanners - that allows Operation ASHA to easily monitor patient compliance. Shelly spoke last week at the R4D offices about how her program measures its impact, along with Steve Ollis of D-Tree.
The Healthy Newborn Network (HNN) and Save the Children have partnered on a blog series that explores the role and potential of technological innovation to improve maternal and newborn survival. Their first post discusses how appropriate technologies in the hands of frontline health workers would bring major breakthroughs. Their second post, also live, provides an overview of the MANDATE (Mobilize Innovations for Maternal and Newborn Health) initiative, a tool designed to help prioritize efforts and investments by comparing the potential impact of technologies.
This week the Washington Post highlighted a conundrum in Pakistan – the country’s population is soaring, but contraceptives remain a difficult sell to much of the population. The article highlights Greenstar Social Marketing Pakistan's work in encouraging contraception use and the situation on the ground in Pakistan. Read the article here.
GENERAL NEWS
FAILFaire, a conference focused on highlighting projects that used mobiles and ICTs in international development and have failed in order to avoid other organizations repeating the same mistake, held their fourth-ever conference on December 14th in New York. Their event creates a space where it is okay to be honest about things that didn’t succeed. Check out one example of a project that failed, as well as New York Times coverage of a past FAILFaire event.
We found The Quiet Health-Care Revolution article, published in the November 2011 edition of The Atlantic, to be a particularly interesting read. The article discusses how CareMore, an HMO based in California, has drastically improved geriatric patient outcomes by focusing on providing preventative care rather than just reactive care. The result - “a hospitalization rate 24% below average; hospital stays 38% shorter; an amputation rate among diabetics 60% below average”. We at CHMI are very interested in cross-border innovation sharing; how can lessons learned from CareMore in the U.S. be applied in the developing world?
PATH, an NGO focused on sustainable solutions to longstanding cycles of poor health, recently self-published a case study detailing their work implementing a total market approach to family planning in Vietnam, entitled Developing a Total Market Plan for Family Planning in Vietnam: An Innovative Public and Private Collaboration to Enhance Equity and Sustainability. Download the article and read more after the jump.