​50% of all hospital admissions and deaths in Kenya are related to non-communicable diseases. By 2030, non-communicable diseases are projected to be the leading cause of death in Africa.

This is just one statistic that highlights the healthcare challenges East Africa faces. Yet even with these challenges, a system ripe for innovation and opportunity exists, with the Thomson Reuters Foundation naming Nairobi as a hot spot for social impact entrepreneurs.

Navigating the healthcare ecosystem in East Africa can present a challenge to many of these burgeoning entrepreneurs. The SEAD team took a look at the ecosystem to discover the role of public and private sectors in spurring innovation, challenges with the health financing market in Kenya and Uganda, and what innovation environment and support systems are currently in place in the two countries.

The outcome is our latest white paper, Healthcare Innovation in East Africa: Navigating the Ecosystem. Authors Patricia Odero, Sylvia Sable, Jennifer Cook, and Krishna Udayakumar interviewed key stakeholders in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, uncovering current ecosystem trends, including:

• Creating patient and provider networks
• Improving quality of care
• Developing technologies that improve efficiency and financial sustainability

The white paper also explores a number of implications for healthcare entrepreneurs, investors in the region, and government entities, such as the value of partnerships with the public sector to scale healthcare innovation in East Africa and the opportunities that exist in the digital health space that require connecting the dots between the health and tech industries.

​Are you interested in social entrepreneurship, global health, and/or emerging markets? Want to use your strategy, communications, or consulting skills to benefit a small and growing business? The SEAD/Innovations in Healthcare summer internship matches talented interns with innovative organizations around the world that are increasing access to quality healthcare in emerging markets. 

Past interns have worked with our innovators in both India and East Africa, spending at least six weeks in the country the social enterprise is based in. Want to see what our interns have worked on? Check out some of their stories:

The internship is open to all current and graduating MBA, MD/MBA, MIDP, and MPP students. The internship projects and deliverables are tailored to the students' interests and skills, as well as the needs of our innovators. Students will also be expected to deliver a written product built around lessons learned during their internship, a blog post about their internship, and present their findings to the Innovations in Healthcare and SEAD teams at the end of the summer.

The internship is between 10 to 12 weeks, full-time, with at least 6 weeks on site with the hosting organization. Interns will receive compensation. The internship is also eligible for the CASE Summer Internship Fund for Fuqua students.

With the advent of technology and the increasing popularization of big data, it can seem like an obsolete task to spend time gaining qualitative insights through conversation. But the importance of human connection is still of the utmost importance in this age of technology. It is probably even more important now than ever before. During TechCon 2016, the theme came to light in multiple conversations throughout the conference.

While discussing the skill set needed for the next generation of development practitioners, the overwhelming majority of panelists pointed at words like humble, connected, grounded, and empathetic. This shows the continuing need for us to develop not only our technical skill set but our emotional and mental skill sets. Development work relies on the people doing it to be compassionate as much as it requires them to be data driven.

This sentiment was heightened in the session dealing with mobile technology for development which I thought was a bit ironic. The speakers emphasized the need for practitioners to really understand the communities they are working for and sometimes the greatest insights come from conversations with the people living there. One of the speakers said, “a phone is not a phone is not a phone.” A confusing phrase but it demonstrates an important point. A phone technologically is the same in two environments but that does not mean it is utilized in the same way. Our ability to understand the way different cultures use technology is as important as the technology. As we innovate and produce newer, more innovative technology, the importance of understanding human behavior and it's culturally-specific nuances cannot always be reduced to data.

The importance of connection and empathy is relevant not only when dealing with populations across the globe but even at home. You don’t need to wait to be in another country to start developing these skills. One of the closing speakers suggested going as close as the next zip code over and starting to have these conversations and starting to understand people. I cannot agree more, especially now. The importance of the human connection cannot be understated. 

Priyanka is a current senior in Economics with a minor in Global Health and a certificate in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She is really interested in the ways businesses and public-private partnerships can help improve and empower the world. ​