Kenyan Startup Capsule Ltd (FLARE) received $1,500 Integration award from African Development Bank at the Nairobi Innovation Week for their online emergency response platform.
Flare integrates a group of companies operating ambulances and fire trucks into its platform, which uses a central map to show the availability and whereabouts of the emergency vehicles.This way hospitals don’t need to call the various companies until they find a driver an available ambulance or fire-truck.
Founders Caitlin Dolkart and Maria Rabinovich believe they can change the expectation on how fast and simple emergency help can be in Nairobi through their app. Their target market is Kenya’s middle class but they hope their service will eventually be able to lower the cost of ambulances and make them accessible to those at the bottom of the social pyramid.
6 out of the 15 most promising start-ups who won in the Nairobi Innovation Week were from the Health track. ConnectMed and medbit were feted in the growth category, Dial a Pad was awarded for the best in the Launch category. The best start up in the idea stage went to Ours Africa, Majik Water was also feted among the top idea start ups. This signifies an advanement in the perceptions of key stakeholders in health innovations.
Prof. Muhammad Yunus held a Public Lecture on The Power of Social Business on 10th of March 2018. Prof. Yunus is the founder of Grameen Bank, a bank that lends loans to poor women in Bangladesh to start and sustain their businesses. In 2006, Prof. Yunus and Grameen Bank won The Nobel Peace Prize for showing that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development.
The lecture, hosted by VIllgro Kenya was held in collaboration with Strathmore Business School presented an opportunity for social entrepreneurs to learn at the feet of the founder of the Social Business Concept.
Social Business as defined by Prof. Yunus is a new dimension for capitalism. This is a business model that does not strive to maximize profits but rather provides solutions to challenges and pressing needs within society thus causing social impact. This is the same business model Villgro Kenya is interested in especially for those health innovations that can serve those at the bottom of the social pyramid
In his lecture, Prof. Yunus poked holes into the current system that has convinced the youth that employment is the only way out.
“ Man by nature is an entrepreneur, employment was created by the system to help those at the top make more money. Start thinking like an entrepreneur and acting like an entrepreneur. People should wake up in the morning and say, I am not a job seeker, I am a job creator.”
The Professor of Economics urged the audience to take advantage of the various opportunities Kenya has for growth. “Kenya is a lucky country, you have everything; the land, water and good weather the opportunities here are enormous.”
He further urged social entrepreneurs to utilize the opportunity to benefit from a $5million non-profit fund launched by Yunus Social Business Kenya.
Yunus Social Business Kenya is a social business fund for tapping into the power of social business to provide solutions to social challenges. The new non-dividend company partnered with local companies to invest in sustainable social businesses.
Villgro Kenya awarded ConnectMed $10,000 for the overall best healthcare innovation at the Nairobi Innovation Week which took place in University of Nairobi.
ConnectMed managed to emerge top out of the 14 applicants who were shortlisted for the health category. The app is a platform where patients can consult via a web-cam based doctor-patient portal and get prescription advice. The platform has a team of 50 doctors who have been locally vetted and found fit to serve patients at anytime from anywhere.
Melissa McCoy, ConnectMed CEO and founder of the app says the app will enable Kenyans experiencing non-emergency ailments to have access to medical services without necessarily booking an appointment.
“ConnectMed boosts formation of a doctor’s consultation timetable without need for manual booking as patients will decide whether to consult online or fix an appointment to visit a doctor’s clinic,” she said adding the online app creates a new revenue source for doctors.
“We are paying doctors competitively enabling them engage a patient for up to 15 minutes thereby creating an online patient history. Patients will no longer worry of any prevailing situation as doctors will be available to attend to patients from the safety of their clinics, homes or anywhere they choose,” she said.
The prize comes with high-touch mentorship through a structured programme, access to networks of healthcare and product development experts, and connections to investors and strategic partners
Majik Water came in second with their prototype which harvests water from air for communities who are off the grid. MedBit, an app that helps you find doctors in Kenya came in third.
Villgro Kenya was a sponsor for the Healthcare category in the recently concluded Nairobi Innovation Week, an event that provides a platform for discovering and showcasing promising start ups. It also attracts investors to initiate funding conversations with the startups.
Matibabu from Uganda won an award for entreprenuers at Pitch@Palace Africa 2.0 for their innovation that tests for malaria in less than two minutes without having to withdraw blood.
Matibabu is a pocket-sized hardware device that uses combination of a beam of red-light and magnetism to detect malaria parasites in tissues. Shaffik Sekitto, an engineer from Uganda and co-founder of the device wowed the audience as he explained how the device had the potential of making diagnosis from the comfort of one’s home.
“…Over 3.3 Billion people in the world are susceptible to malaria, to add to that, 400, 000 people die annually because of the disease in front of experienced doctors and very many diagnostoc tools in the market…A simple malaria test takes 30 mins from the time blood is drawn from the patient to the time a conclusive result is returned. A doctor will have to take 600 minutes to finish his workload. With the growing population the doctor will not be able to diagnose even a quarter of his patients in a day in the next 10 years.” Sekitto explained in his pitch.
He further added that the non-invasive device can diagnose malaria in less than 2 mins, is a fifth of the price of the current diagnostics in the market and is 15 times faster and five times less expensive than the current diagnostics.
The 5th generation prototype has undergone 384 tests and has attained an accuracy rate of 80%. Apart from diagnosing malaria, the device also obtains data on the diagnosis and maps out regions with a high prevalence of malaria. The device is heading into clinical trials and Sekitto and his team hope to commercialise their device after validation and obtaining the necessary certificates and licences.
Pitch@Palace Africa is a collaboration between the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation and Pitch@Palace, an initiative founded by The Duke of York in 2014 as a platform to amplify and accelerate the work of Entrepreneurs.
Earlier this month, ASME released the top 10 finalists for its IShow Kenya competition which Matibabu, a non invasive device used to test for malaria was among.
Matibabu has been announced as the winner of the competition winning the top prize of $10,000.
Matibabu, a flagship product from thinkIT Limited a software development company in Uganda focusing on development & research of e-health applications is in the process of releasing its 5th generation prototype.
Science Set from Ghana & Sign IO from Tanzania were the runners up respectively.
Winners become part of the ISHOW alumni network, a global community of hardware innovators with exclusive access to experts and resources.