1. Identify two SPECIFIC funding sources for the design phase of your project and two SPECIFIC funding sources for the dissemination (implementation / distribution / commercialization) phase of your project. For each funding source, explain why this is a good fit for your project, and what SPECIFIC aspect of your project might the funding source support.

• DESIGN:

• • • NIH: “Small Business Initiatives for Innovative tools and Technologies for Improving Outcomes for Maternal Health”
      • Aims to focus on developing clinical tools to measure biomarkers and personalized treatment options for pregnant women
      • This NOSI focuses on the development and validation of tools, technologies, and approaches

    • UNICEF Funding Opportunity for Health Tech Startups

      • If your company is leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), data science (DS), drones, blockchain, or extended reality (XR), we want to hear from you!
      • Goal is to use technology to improve child’s health
      • Looking for solutions that strengthen systems in remote and low or no connectivity areas

• DISSEMINATION:

• • Grand Challenges Canada: “Transition to Scale”
    • Good fit because submitted proposals in the past for previous projects (familiar with what they are looking for)
    • The specific one we looked at “seeks to support the transition to scale and sustainability (not for new ideas but for implementation and distribution)”
    • They invite applications from the following areas: Maternal and Newborn Health, Digital Health, Medical Products and Technology, Community Health Worker Models, Urban Sanitation & Hygiene, and Options for safe pregnancy termination (basically solutions to health and development challenges in the developing world)
  • MSD for Mothers 
    • Gives global grants to help improve maternal mortality rates
    • Goal is to provide maternity care 
    • Believe “no women should die while giving life” 
    • Want to prevent pregnancy and child-birth related suffering and death
    • corporate grant program that enables MSD offices around the world to support nongovernmental organizations that are improving maternal health. The Global Grants program is designed to be responsive to local women’s needs and extends our reach and impact to many more countries across the globe.
    • Emphasis on LMICs it seems 

 

2. Identify five specific partnerships that you need to forge to advance your project forward with the ultimate goal of positively impacting at least one million people. Describe exactly how that partnership might help you achieve scale and why that entity might be willing to work with you.

1. Manufacturing company: This is needed so that once we have the design of our product, we will be able to produce enough wearable devices to reach the target population. 
2. Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation: This partnership would help us with validating what the people of Sierra Leone would find helpful, and could potentially be customers and distributors of our product to PHUs. 
3. Women of Sierra Leone: We will need to build trusting relationships with the women of Sierra Leone because they will be the people using our products, and so we need to know if they would feel comfortable using them. 
4. Wearable device companies: We need to understand how different wearable devices on the market work, and so we will need products from different companies. This could be in the form of free samples or purchases. 
5. PHUs: We will need to know if PHUs and PHU workers would use this type of technology, and we will need to have their trust to successfully implement it. 

 

3. 3. Review the sample questions for your semester-end presentations: (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RObgGrePBUjAYN9DRhPG9kg4DjGvstVnElCrYstlbF4/edit). As a team, identify the top five questions that you don’t know how to answer. Your questions will serve as the nucleus for conversations during our final class next week.

• 1: How exactly does our product work?

• 2: What is our monitoring and evaluation strategy?

• 3: Describe our steady-state business model – how does everything work? What is our concept of operations? 

• 4: What is our IP strategy (/do we have any intellectual property as of now?) 

• 5: What kinds of partnerships will you develop to enable your customers to access your products?

Khanjan Recommendations:

• USAID (fed gov)
• SBIR(fed gov)
• NIH (fed gov)
• Acumen fund (social impact VC)
• Pennsylvania department of community and economic development (state gov)