Ashoka Fellows

In this week's episode of the AshokaTECH Podcast, host Alex Budak interviews Ashoka Fellow David Green.  Green's work focuses on health care delivery to the developing world, enabling developing countries to produce, distribute, and service high-quality, affordable health care products. Having already directed the successful production and distribution of two products–intraocular lenses and surgical sutures, David is now launching an effort to manufacture and distribute top-of-the-line, cost effective, cosmetically acceptable, and locally maintainable hearing aids.  Alex asks him about his ongoing project, as well as what Green has termed "compassionate capitalism."

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This post contributed by Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Hilmi Quraishi.

This post contributed by Ashoka's Osman Ashai. The following is Part 1 in a case study series following Ashoka Fellow Hilmi Quraishi's collaboration with Microsoft to use mobile technology to educate the public and health care workers about Tuburculosis prevention and treatment.

Last week in Chennai, India Ashoka Fellow, staff and investors met to discuss experiences reaching rural populations in India.  One of the discussions centered around best practices, and thoughts about what "reaching rural populations" means to each Fellow. Some highlights:

• Vijay P. Singh mentioned that no one imagined that one could leverage villagers' interest in ringtones to teach them about SMS use.
• Paul Basil talked about how the poor should be better segmented--not to treat them as a group but a set of groups, some easily accessible and some not, and that it should be taken into account. 
• Kalyan Paul and Ravindranath touched on examples when a technology was not adopted: In Kalyan's case, he said that the need for understanding how different communities may use the same technologies, which may not make it appropriate. E.g. a wood stove that may require one tree type that may not grow in certain parts of the country. And Ravindranath said that servicing was just as important as the launch of the technology.

You can read the full transcript of their discussion here.

Above: Freedom HIV/AIDS Booth at eHealth Pavillion during the ITU Telecom World 2009 in Geneva.

“Donor funding is not viable to create a successful e-Health model. It can only be based on a sustainable business model”.--Ashoka Fellow Hilmi Quraishi.

Ashoka Fellow Hilmi Quraishi, co-founder of ZMQ, was invited by the World Health Organization to speak at the Connected Health Forum during the conference, and also exhibit the award winning and pioneering project - Freedom HIV/AIDS, which combats HIV/AIDS in Asia and Africa using mobile phones and mobile technology under the best e-Health practices from around the world.

Hilmi speaking at the Forum “Connected Health: Innovative business models and clinical practices” during the ITU Telecom World 2009. ITU Telecom World is a crucial event for global telecommunication and information communication technology (ICT) sector, which is organized by International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and is held every 3 years. This year, the conference was held in Geneva from 5-9 October which attracted stakeholders from across the industry, global telecommunication and ICT platform.

In this article from Forbes India, Ashoka Support Network member Subroto Bagchi interviews Ashoka Fellow Harish Hande on how he was able to make a sustainable business model out of his solar electric social enterprise, SELCO.

Picture from the Forbes India article.

One of my favorite Ashoka Fellows of all time is Bart Weetjens, founder of APOPO. Obsessed with rodents while growing up, Bart soon discovered that they have an uncanny sense of smell and that they can be trained.  So through his organization he started by training rats to detect landmines and he has found that rats are more effective than dogs in detecting them, and because their weight is so light, rats don't set off the mines. His model is gaining so much popularity that even the Colombian government has adopted it.

And our furry friends' story doesn't end there; Bart is originally Belgian and in Flemish Tuberculosis means "disease that smells bad." He asked himself: "would the rat's sense of smell be powerful enough to detect tuberculosis?" And indeed his team found that it was, and they also found that rats were faster and more accurate at detecting tuberculosis than a regular lab. You can see the technical reports for the laboratory testing here.

Well, Wired's article's title is really "AND Data for All: Why Obama's Geeky New CIO Wants to Put All Gov't Info Online" but I couldn't resist to give it an Ashoka slant by calling this entry "Data for all".

The article is an interesting interview on how the Obama government plans to make government data more accessible to the public--they even envision people whipping out their iPhones and making quick charts out of census or health care data, or any other government data that you can think of. I can't wait to be one of those people (I love playing with data).

Because knowledge = power, the best public policies are based on a comprehensive grasp of all the related data and user studies. Similarly, the best social enterprises are based on a deep understanding of the social problems that they aim to solve, and this means having access to excellent data sources. In this field of work, Ashoka Fellow Pratima Joshi comes to mind -- she is using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to survey and map city slums, generating critical information to advocate for the provision of essential public services to slum inhabitants in Pune, India and surrounding urban areas.