This post was written by Jaclyn Karasik, a Duke junior majoring in biology and a member of the SEAD Student Advisory Council.

Keynote speaker Ann Mei Chang emphasizes importance of rapid innovation, data collection in international development

Ann Mei Chang is the new Executive Director of USAID's U.S. Global Development Lab (GDL) and served as the keynote speaker at the 2015 Duke Symposium on Scaling Innovations in Global Health. The GDL has a two-part mission: 1) to produce breakthrough development innovations and 2) accelerate the transformation of the US development enterprise. Having spent decades in Silicon Valley, Chang’s biggest strength is in technology in developing countries, with a special focus on women’s issues. During her talk, Chang described aspects of USAID’s five pillars of twenty-first century development: evidence and iteration, partnership, technology, open innovation, and scale and sustainability. Chang paid special attention to using data and technology in transformative ways to speed up development, noting that you can only improve what can be measured. “If you can’t measure it, it’s not worth doing,” Chang said, acknowledging her intense focus on evidence. Chang noted that USAID is trying to take some hints from fast-moving developers in Silicon Valley and apply these ideas to global development, which is usually approached in slow-moving projects. She mentioned the importance of heuristic, less precise methods of data collection in order to get an idea of what is going on before diving into more intensive studies.

With a special focus on rising entrepreneurs, Chang discussed how her favorite quote comes from Thomas Edison: “Genius is one percent inspiration, and 99% perspiration.” She noted how great ideas can be formulated relatively quickly, but the long slog comes with figuring out how to apply the ideas in society. Chang’s spunky and insightful keynote kicked off the 2015 SEAD Symposium and gave participants a government and private sector-based perspective on the effort and opportunity in innovating for international development.

An ongoing challenge in Kenya and many developing (and developed) countries is making healthcare accessible to all portions of the population, particularly those in rural and semi-urban areas.  The promise of technology to deliver healthcare from a distance – i.e. telemedicine - is a potentially exciting solution but requires innovative thinking around new business models and incentives for stakeholders at all levels.

Enter a few dozen passionate, hard-working, and motivated Duke undergraduate and graduate students.  Students who, in addition to the weight of their daily commitments as students, RAs, employees, and volunteers, have offered their time to generating innovative models of delivering telemedicine in Kenya.  Enter the SEAD Case Competition.

In 2015, SEAD innovator Afya Research Africa (ARA) was thrilled to be selected to present their telemedicine challenge to Duke students through the SEAD Case Competition.  During the March 20th SEAD Symposium, Samson Gwer and Moses Ndiritu of ARA challenged the participating students to identify ways in which ARA could expand access to specialists through county hospital telemedicine pods – and to consider meeting needs for training, infrastructure, and revenue generation, as well as a system to monitor and evaluate the implementation.  The students, working in interdisciplinary teams, spent the next five days developing their ideas. On the evening of March 25th, four of those teams had the opportunity to present their solutions to Sam, Moses, and each other.

One team, comprised of graduate students from DGHI, Sanford, and Pratt, proposed a bundled payment system to provide incentives to providers as well as protection for patients, in addition to a partnership with pharma based on existing successful models.  Another team, comprised of all undergraduate students from a variety of majors, proposed the use of medical specialist trainees to deliver the specialty care, thereby reducing costs and ingraining the use of telemedicine in the next generation of medical professionals in Kenya.   This team also incorporated other incentive and payment schemes currently in practice in other parts of East Africa, including P4P (payment for performance).  Another team addressed the challenges and expenses of training clinicians on use of the telemedicine platform by creating a digital training program that is easily scalable; this team also recommended partnership with the government to incorporate telemedicine as part of their health care strategy.  The last team presented in-depth research on the factors that have helped or hindered the implementation of telemedicine in other countries, and proposed a model based on a tiered system of pricing and services.

Sam and Moses were thoroughly impressed with all of the presentations, and shared that each of them offered a number of promising options that could be incorporated into their plan to introduce and scale telemedicine around Kenya.  They had already shared some of the ideas with their partners from CISCO and Organge Telecom in Nairobi, and had created a lot of buzz and excitement.  At the end of the evening, Sam and Moses announced the winning team – which was the team that really “shook them to think differently” about telemedicine: the “SEAD Bass Connections” team composed of DGHI MSc student Kayla Stankevitz, undergrad Neuroscience & Global Health major Karishma Popli, and graduate Pharmacology & Cancer Biology student Jun Wang.

Congratulations to all who participated and generated excellent ideas, particularly the teams that presented last night: Steven Soto, Kailani Montane, Michaela Walker, Betty Tushabe, Barbara Neto, Starling Shan, Adi Pradana, Natalie Skeiky, Sulzhan Bali, Naman Pandey, Hailey Diaz, Tesha Florence, Veerain Gupta, Jaclyn Karasik, Shalini Subbarao, Kayla Stankevitz, Karishma Popli, and Jun Wang

It's hard to believe that it is almost time for the 2015 Duke Symposium on Scaling Innovations in Global Health! We've been working hard to build a great schedule for everyone and we look forward to hearing the lessons innovators have learned through their work in global health. This year Ann Mei Chang, Executive Director of USAID's U.S. Global Development Lab, will be coming to talk about the importance of innovation in global health development. Ann Mei Chang is well-known for her work promoting technology to tackle the various issues women and girls face in the developing world. SEAD Innovators will be sharing with us the skills they find critical to be a successful entrepreneur and you'll have the chance to ask the innovators your questions both during the panels and the networking session. If you haven't registered yet, be sure to as you only have a week left!

We also have a number of complimentary events scheduled during the week of the Symposium that Duke students should be sure to join us for fantastic opportunities! 

On March 19th, Ticora V. Jones, PhD, Chief of USAID’s Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN), will be hosting a lunch and chat where she will share her own exciting career trajectory, offer insights on key trends she sees in careers in international development, and discuss how students can make themselves competitive, and answer questions. Dr. Jones is a social innovator and scientist who bridges the worlds of science, policy, and international development.

Space is limited so be sure to RSVP! Read more.

Last year's case competition was a smashing success and by popular demand we're bringing it back! The SEAD Case Competition offers a unique opportunity for graduate and undergraduate students from diverse schools and disciplines to work together in teams of four to five to tackle real-time challenges facing an innovative health care initiative in the developing world. 

Student teams will work through a real-life case scenario and develop concise, strategic recommendations for a client organization; the case will require an interdisciplinary approach that may involve issues related to policy, marketing, behavior change, and business. This is a great opportunity for you to network with students outside of your department and learn from each other.

You do not need a full team to register for the case competition! Students are encouraged to register as an individual or partial team and we will match you up with other students to form interdisciplinary teams.

The case competition will begin March 20th during the Symposium. Students must register by March 17th so don't miss your chance to participate! Read more.