SOCAP21 Virtual Scholarship Entrepreneur Winners in Global Health
Every year, SOCAP grants scholarships to social entrepreneurs from all over the globe, providing the recipients with free entry to the flagship SOCAP event as well as tools to build their enterprises further. This year’s entrepreneurs represent incredible solutions to pressing social, cultural, and environmental problems. (Check out the program’s features and the full list of winners here.)
As our world continues to face the global Covid-19 pandemic, the past year has shed a major light on health inequities across the globe. We’re inspired by our scholarship entrepreneur winners in the health sector that are making progress toward health equity through innovative solutions.
Below, hear from 11 entrepreneurs from around the world who are making an impact in health.
BrainForce
What is your company solving for?
BrainForce empowers disabled individuals who cannot use their hands or fingers by providing hands-free control of smartphones and computers. Our mission is to grant people with disabilities the same level of productivity as everyone else at school, work or home. BrainForce’s motion tracking glasses and earphones allow control of the mouse cursor on screen with just head movements, creating a “headmouse.” An individual wears the head-mouse and looks up to move the cursor up, looks down to move it down, and so forth.
What is inspiring you now?
BrainForce uses technology to enhance the quality of life of people. At the core, all sciences are supposed to be driven by this motive. We get to see our work actually help people do things they were not capable of doing before, people who can not use their hands using their computers and phones hands free with BrainForce’s headmouse.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Help people overcome disability barriers, connect your close and loved ones in need to the BrainForce headmouse!
Care 2 Communities (C2C)
What is your company solving for?
Care 2 Communities (C2C) is a nonprofit organization that operates a network of primary care clinics in northern Haiti. C2C is different from traditional aid models for two main reasons: We have a public-private partnership with Haiti’s government—rather than building new clinics, we work with the Ministry of Health to rehabilitate existing public clinics, improving the quality of primary care services offered, and increasing access to care for poor and low-income people, empowering families to lead healthier lives. We have a social enterprise, community-based health care model that delivers results for under-resourced communities. We provide high-quality, affordable, patient-centered care through seven clinics, which operate as social businesses that begin to financially sustain themselves over time, ensuring that people get the health care they need today and in perpetuity.
What is inspiring you now?
Our new sexual and reproductive health program that we just launched to educate young girls in Haiti about their bodies and choices available to them about their reproductive and sexual well-being!
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Haiti gets a bad rap in the global community due to the seemingly never-ending natural catastrophes (including repeated hurricanes and an earthquake in 2010), mismanagement of international aid, and ongoing political and civil unrest. I want the SOCAP community to see and recognize the positive initiatives coming out of Haiti that are bolstering the local economy, working in partnership with existing institutions, and making a lasting impact on the health and well-being of vulnerable communities through innovative solutions.
Konbit PBC
What is your company solving for?
Konbit is a public benefit corporation enabling food sovereignty and equity in Native American lands. We foster cultural hubs through our network of community farms and our smart-farming digital platform. We empower Indigenous social entrepreneurs by localizing year-round, nutrient-dense food production, thus kindling pride, spreading prosperity, and building resilience in the community.
What is inspiring you now?
Eco-social-cultural entrepreneur is the need of the hour, given the Covid-19 “Hunger Pandemic” and climate change.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Be a changemaker everyday! Say what you do—do what you say!
Lambent Data
What is your company solving for?
Lambent Data’s OurREACH™ collaborative software engagement platform and app, with data analytics, equips social service and health care providers to better reach families and empowers the families to reach their milestones and improve their outcomes in myriad arenas. Providers subscribe to the SaaS tool and deploy logins to staff and families for the app, which addresses health, social determinants of health (e.g., housing, education, jobs) and child development. We’ve launched a pilot in New Jersey with a national organization serving teen parents and have a robust pipeline of potential customers.
What is inspiring you now?
We’re excited by the way in which our collaborative software platform and app OurREACH™ is equipping our pilot organization staff and empowering the families they serve! We’re enthusiastic about scaling further within this national organization and other networks to engage many additional families to reach their milestones in many areas of their lives.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Let’s keep building community and innovation, helping one another, as we all seek to help our world and families in communities to thrive!
NotesFirst, Inc.
What is your company solving for?
NotesFirst provides doctors and health care front liners in underserved communities a means to capture and manage patient health data in real-time, with no infrastructure investment required.
What is inspiring you now?
The social impact our company can make globally in the lives of health care front liners in underserved communities.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Help social entrepreneurs to connect and engage with partners/funders that can help them scale.
OmniVis
What is your company solving for?
OmniVis is focused on developing devices for use in global health. We make mobile devices for waterborne pathogen testing, saliva testing, and blood-based disease testing. OmniVis wants to enable better health outcomes for communities around the globe by providing technologies that are rapid and require no scientific knowledge to operate.
What is inspiring you now?
I am inspired by the individuals who are so dedicated to making a difference with their work that they don’t treat their job like a regular 9-to-5. I am inspired by the companies with life-saving missions to the extent that I am consumed with thoughts of making a difference and helping others, particularly in the humanitarian sector, whether at work or away from my desk. I hope to be the best version of myself every day when I show up to work, so that I can play a miniscule (but important) role in the social impact space.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
This past year has brought challenges and new hardships for many. It has also exposed many gaps in diagnostics and health care and highlighted disparities in access to resources on a global scale. My call to action is that we don’t spend our energy pointing fingers or placing blame, but take away lessons learned and move forward along a path that emphasizes innovation and social impact.
PODD: Participatory One Health Disease Detection
What is your company solving for?
A disease-surveillance platform that empowers local communities to prevent zoonotic spillovers and protect their livelihoods.
What is inspiring you now?
The resiliency of Thai people I meet every day, they are natural-born entrepreneurs.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Despite ample warning signs, such as the current global pandemic, we are still hurtling toward the next big one and need to take preventative action.
Public Health Literacy
What is your company solving for?
We aim to improve quality of life through public health literacy.
What is inspiring you now?
The need for public health literacy to improve quality of life for underserved populations.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Offer more opportunities to entrepreneurs to make their projects become reality. There is a need for innovative approaches to solve many of the challenges humans are going through.
Salamat: Healthy Mother, Healthy Family
What is your company solving for?
Salamat is a maternal health app that improves follow-up and continuity of care through improved patient record access, communication and education. Our target population is women of child-bearing age and newborns throughout Afghanistan. Our app digitizes patient records and provides telehealth and tele-education services for patients.
What is inspiring you now?
The impact we are able to make on thousands of Afghan women every day in an innovative way.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Join us by providing your strategic, technical, and financial support for expanding our app. Our team is growing and we need mentors, advisors, and technical experts to join us. We also need financial support to help us reach our goal of reaching 5 million women.
TQIntelligence
What is your company solving for?
TQIntelligence is a mental health software startup developing a solution for youth from low-income communities. We leverage the emerging science of Speech Emotion Recognition and AI to enable payers and providers to collaborate to deliver affordable quality mental health care. TQI’s innovation augments low-skilled therapists’ clinical capabilities to improve their therapeutic effectiveness; addressing the stubborn disparities in treatment outcomes requires an augmented intelligence platform that enables a multistakeholder collaboration.
What is inspiring you now?
The capacity to use innovative technology to improve the quality of life of youth from low-income communities.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Improving the mental health treatment outcomes for children and adolescents from low-income communities has a multiplier effect. The concerted effort to reduce poverty needs to include a plan to address the disparities in mental health treatment outcomes.
Vispala Technologies
What is your company solving for?
Vispala provides affordable and high-value prosthetic products to an estimated 43 million amputees in developing countries, thereby restoring their livelihoods and dignity.
What is inspiring you now?
The opportunity to build a disruptive business that has deep social impact.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Find your passion!
