As the school year comes to a close, we ask for your help in planning and improving SEAD for the 2014-2015 school year!  Your input helps us design workshops, support classes, coordinate the Symposium on Scaling Innovations in Global Health, and more.  The survey should take about five minutes to complete.  Whether you have attended SEAD events this school year or not, we want to hear from you!

We're also pleased to announce that photos from the 2014 Symposium are now available on the site!  Check them out here.

For three days, 42 undergraduate and graduate students put their skills to the test to develop recommendations for SEAD Innovator Changamka Microhealth. Changamka is an integrated health-financing company that utilizes an electronic platform, accessible by mobile phone, to facilitate the financing of healthcare services for low- and middle-income families in Kenya. The case challenged teams to develop a marketing strategy to maximize registration, customer savings, and the number of insurance policies purchased. Students joined across schools and disciplines to create a presentation of their recommendations.

The nine teams each received the case on the afternoon of Friday, March 28th and worked over the weekend to develop recommendations due at midnight on Monday. On Sunday afternoon, teams had the chance to meet with an MBA student coach to help them further develop and articulate their recommendations. The coaches included one student who had interned with Changamka this past summer.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the judges scored the teams' slides and selected the four finalists who would present their ideas in person on Friday, April 4th. The judges included:

• Zack Oloo, Executive Director of Changamka
  
• Eric Green, Duke Global Health Institute Faculty, and co-founder of Baby Monitor
• Karen Clune, Innovation Advisor in the USAID Global Health Bureau
• Paul Bloom, former Marketing Professor, and Senior Fellow at Fuqua’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship
• Kim Langsam, Program Director for the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke

On Friday, April 4th, the four finalists presented their recommendations to the judges. Changamka's Executive Director, Zack Oolo, expressed his appreciation for all of the excellent ideas and said there were many things he would keep in mind from all of the case submissions.

The winner of the competition was "Team L," consisting of Jeff Schaal (Pratt graduate student), Katie Cottam, Jaclyn Karasik, and Florence Tesha (Trinity undergraduate students), and Ishaan Jalan and Darrin Lim (Pratt undergraduate students). Their recommendations included a number of ways to incentivize Linda Jamii clients to save at various stages, in addition to communications recommendations. Congratulations, Team L!

Thank you to everyone who attended the Duke Symposium for Scaling Innovations on Global Health!  We had over 200 participants join us at the Trent Semans Center for Health Education to learn about social entrepreneurship and the latest innovations in global health.  Chuck Slaughter, founder and president of Living Goods, gave a fantastic talk on his organization's work that we're sure will inspire Duke students to pursue their own innovative ideas.  The panels provided for some engaging discussions on a variety of topics from careers in global health innovation to financing social ventures.

Over the coming weeks we will be processing the video that was taken over the course of the Symposium and will be posting them to the site for anyone that missed a session they were interested in or wants to see one a second time!  We will post an announcement here once the video is ready for viewing.

Thanks again to everyone and we look forward to seeing you again at next year's symposium!

Read the news release and meet the awardees here!

Want to find out who will be panelists at the Symposium?  Interested in reading about the Innovators and the representatives that will be coming to the Symposium?  Need a map of where the Trent Semans Center for Health Education is?

Download the full Symposium program now!

Next week is the Duke Symposium on Scaling Innovations in Global Health!  We're excited to be welcoming the SEAD Innovators to Duke campus and giving the community a chance to learn about the exciting work they're engaged in.

Our last blog post featured innovator attendees with operations in India. This week we’ve highlighted innovators working throughout Africa. We hope that you enjoy learning more about the organizations who will be attending the Symposium. If you would like the chance to meet these innovators in person, register for the Symposium here.

We are less than a month away from the Duke Symposium on Scaling Innovations in Global Health! The office is bustling as we begin our final push to attract attendees, prepare our network of innovators for our panels, and organize the final event details.

Attendees including leading innovators within SEAD, senior leadership from our supporting organizations, Duke faculty and students, investors, and health system leaders interested in healthcare innovation will gather on Friday, April 4th to contribute to a thoughtful discussion. We hope that attendees not only leave feeling encouraged but with truly valuable connections. The Symposium includes what promises to be an engaging speech by Chuck Slaughter on creating livelihoods while scaling access to life-changing products, a moderated panel on “smart failure,” a networking reception with our 17 innovators, and much more.

Many of the SEAD innovators participating at this year’s Symposium are traveling from faraway places such as Kenya and India to highlight their innovations, tell their story, and describe the type of support they need to achieve growth to our audience. Each week, leading up to the Symposium we will highlight a small group of innovators participating this year! Round 1 is featured below and introduces innovators delivering care in India – Enjoy!

Interested in meeting our network innovators? Register for the SEAD Symposium here.

In three short weeks, it will be time for the Duke Symposium on Scaling Innovations in Global Health!  We've been hard at work bringing together SEAD innovators and global health experts to bring you a exciting mix of panels to check out.  Some of the confirmed panel topics include:

• Role of Behavior Change in Encouraging the Uptake of Healthcare Innovation
• Understanding Ecosystem Factors Fostering and Inhibiting Healthcare Innovation in India
• Fail Forward: How Successful Social Entrepreneurs Reap the Benefits of Failure

To see a full list of the panel discussions we have in store for you, check out the latest on the Symposium site.  And make sure to register today!

We are working hard to bring together an exciting three days in healthcare innovations for the 2nd Annual SEAD Summit and Symposium!

The 2nd Annual SEAD Summit brings together leading healthcare innovators from around the world for an intensive three day accelerator focused on scaling proven healthcare solutions.  This year's Summit will take place at Duke University from April 2-4, 2014 in Durham, North Carolina.  All SEAD innovators are invited to send one participant to attend the full training which provides an opportunity to meet CEO's of leading healthcare innovations, work with leading professors from Duke's Fuqua School of Business and Duke Medicine, network with undergraduate and graduate students, participate in roundtables with USAID and other healthcare funders and showcase their innovations to the broader Raleigh-Durham community.  While the accelerator portion of the SEAD Summit is closed to SEAD innovators, the general public is invited to attend the SEAD Symposium taking place on Friday, April 4th.

Registration for the public SEAD Symposium will open by late February and be available on our website.