Orange supports the first m-health competition launched in Botswana
Botswana’s public health care system faces many challenges. In addition to being burdened by HIV (2nd world highest prevalence rate), Tuberculosis, and Malaria, the healthcare system suffers from a shortage of healthcare workers and reliable IT infrastructure, particularly outside of urban areas. Botswana also ranks second in Africa in terms mobile technology penetration, with 1.5 mobile subscriptions per capita.
This competition, supported and co-organized by Orange should prompt young Batswana (inhabitants of Botswana) to leverage on this facts to create the connected healthcare system of tomorrow.
What is this m-health competition about?
First, let’s define m-health (AKA: “mobile-health”) as the utilization of mobile technology in the practice of medicine and public health.
This competition is an open event designed to engage and grow Batswana youths’ vision, talent, and entrepreneurship and leverage the vast potential impact that m-health can have on Botswana’s healthcare system.
The m-health Innovation Competition is a chance for the Botswana’s youth to bring an idea to life that can improve public health and health care delivery in Botswana... and save lives!Besides it is not specifically focusing at the products in themselves but more at the concepts. Indeed one of the main prize awarded to the winning team will be seed funding so that it can develop its project, if needed with local mentors and resources (like ICT developers for instance) to help make their concept a reality.
Apart from Orange, this initiative gathers a pool of relevant local and international supporting institutions: UNICEF, the Botswana Innovation Hub, PEPFAR (US), the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Transport and Communication and the Botswana-UPENN partnership are all on board to support this great competition.
What is the originality of this competition?
First of all, this competition is not only open to ICT developers. As mentioned above, it focuses more at the ideas, concepts and how relevant and useful they would be for the healthcare system.
Furthermore, the competition is organized in several steps.
First potential applicants have to register on the website of the competition and to outline what their idea is.
According to their concept and the health field with which it is connected, they will be linked up during the workshop with experts from the Ministry of Health. The objective being that their final applications match a real challenge faced by the Botswana healthcare system but also that it can potentially be integrated in its program.
Last, a particular attention will be given to the composition of the teams applying.
The more diverse the team, the stronger the application will be (e.g. a team consisting of a Computer Science major, a Nurse, and a Philosophy major will be stronger than a team consisting of just Computer Science majors).
An extra consideration will also be given to teams with unemployed members.
Why is Orange supporting this initiative?
This competition is at the crossroad between supports to local entrepreneurship, improvement of health thanks to telecommunication technologies and youth empowerment, all topics being at cornerstone of the work being done collaboratively between Orange Botswana and Orange Labs locally.
The CEO of Orange Botswana, Elizabeth Medou Badang, during the launch of the competition underlined the fact that orange’s support to mhealth initiatives is not something new: the company has been supporting since February 2009 a telemedicine project in partnership with the Botswana-UPENN partnership and the Ministry of health, making it a true example of mhealth best practice in the AMEA zone.
Ralph Ankri, head of the Support Africa 4 Local Innovation Program (SA4LI) which is funding the initiative, underlined the high importance for Orange Labs to support it:
“The great potential for mhealth in Botswana is already demonstrated: it is one of the wealthiest country in the continent facing high health stakes (HIV, TB) and its youth is particularly well trained. All these elements leaded to great innovative results in the mhealth field recently in this country, being some sort of boiling lab for the discipline in the region. It is therefore very important for Orange Labs to be connected with the great local initiatives at the earliest stage…in a country we have the chance to have a network and some of the Orange Labs’ tool to support local innovation already deployed like the Emerginov platform.”
timing:
The official launch has been done on January 29th; young Batswana have now until the 15th of March to register.
The workshop will be organized one week later.
Winner and prizes will be given at the end of May.
find out more:
contact:
- Julien Legland: julien.legland@orange.com