Andrew Prentice of the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom will conduct a phase II clinical trial to test the ability of a unique nano iron compound to safely and more effectively treat iron-deficiency anemia in children. Iron-deficiency anemia is a common condition particularly in women and children in resource-poor settings and can be deadly. Current iron supplements have limited effects in these settings and undesirable side effects including increasing the risk of infectious diarrhea in children which causes severe morbidity and mortality. They previously developed a compound iron hydroxide adipate tartrate that acts like dietary iron as it can be directly absorbed in humans keeping it away from any resident intestinal pathogens that also use it as a nutrient source. They will perform an intervention study with 600 iron-deficient anemic children in The Gambia and compare their compound with the current supplement to see if it can normalize iron levels without the side effects.

Thokozani Mwenyekonde from CARE in Malawi is implementing the Umodzi project to promote gender equality for women and girls by engaging adolescent girls and boys, along with supportive adult male and female role models, to integrate gender equitable attitudes and behavior in schools as a basis for changing attitudes nationwide. Umodzi, which means "oneness" in the local Chichewa language, will build upon and adapt existing gender equality approaches including integrating efforts into the school curriculum, training teachers who convene teen club meetings, and working with adults who are also engaged in CARE's pro-women agriculture and savings programs in the school catchment areas.

Funmilola OlaOlorun of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and Neetu John of the International Center for Research on Women, in the U.S. will conduct a cluster randomized control trial to evaluate a multi-pronged approach for empowering Nigerian women within the household and thereby the wider community. Their program targets both partners of couples, both individually and together, and involves training on gender socialization and finance, and access to family planning. The aim is to generate rigorous evidence on how to promote gender equality in household decision-making and improve family health and wellbeing.

Fatima Adamu from the Federal University Birnin Kebbi in Nigeria will support the transition of adolescent girls from secondary school into heath-related careers such as medicine, midwifery, and nursing to address the shortage of female health workers specifically in rural northern Nigeria. Social norms dictate that women only receive reproductive care from females, so a shortage means that many, particularly in the North, do not receive any health care during pregnancy. Additionally, women who pursue careers are more likely to have children later, which is associated with a healthier life. They will integrate existing and new education strategies, including coaching particularly female teachers in student-centered learning methods, to improve core academic and vocational training, and enhance life skills for girls. Their approach will be tested using a controlled trial.

Sarah van Boekhout and the team of WaterSHED in Cambodia will further catalyze the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) market by developing a women’s mentorship network and a special marketing program in order to improve the productivity and decision-making power of women in rural Cambodia. This project focuses on the success of female entrepreneurs in the market for WASH products and sevices. Members of the capacity-building and mentorship network, branded as the WEwork collective, will receive support and training on personal, professional, and community leadership; business planning; and financial literacy. This approach will be tested with more than 200 women across eight target provinces in Cambodia, and will emphasize community-driven peer coaching and support. WaterSHED will also reshape WASH marketing tools and strategies in order to better reach rural women consumers and to promote the success of business women in the supply chain. The outcomes of this project will better inform the design of women’s economic empowerment programs worldwide.

Elizabeth Ombech of ZanaAfrica Group Ltd. in Kenya seeks to implement safe, accurate, and cost-effective reproductive health innovations for girls—in the form of disposable sanitary pads coupled with girl-centered reproductive health information and resources—and to evaluate this approach against traditional facilitation-based methods for impact on girls’ educational attainment, sexual behavior, reproductive health, and self-determination in order to expand the global evidence base surrounding the role of menstrual health-focused interventions in gender parity, health, and development.

Appiah Kwaku Boateng of 4-H Ghana in Ghana will support 600 new and existing 4-H school and community clubs in Ghana, which teach livelihood and life skills such as business planning, farming and communication, with a stronger focus on girls. This will serve to enhance the economic and education opportunities particularly for young girls who are more vulnerable to unemployment. They will recruit and train more women to run the clubs and engage girls by acting as mentors, and to act as district advisers. They aim to develop a successful approach that can then be implemented across Africa.

Samuel Alcaine of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the U.S. will engineer bacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) to produce an antimicrobial compound that helps avoid bacteria such as enteroaggregative Escherichia coli developing resistance to the phage, thereby increasing their value for treating associated childhood diseases. Phage could be valuable for treating intestinal diseases that cause severe morbidity and mortality in developing countries as they can selectively destroy pathogenic bacteria. However, some bacteria rapidly develop resistance to the phage, which renders them useless. By inducing phage-infected bacteria to also release a toxic substance (bacteriocin), this would destroy any potentially resistant neighboring bacteria. They will engineer T7 bacteriophage to express one of two selected bacteriocins and test their ability to circumvent phage resistance in E. coli.

Mark Ansermino of The University of British Columbia in Canada will adapt near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) for the simple diagnosis and monitoring of children at increased risk of mortality from pneumonia. Children with moderate to severe malnutrition who develop pneumonia are far more likely to die than more nourished children, but diagnosing pneumonia in these individuals is problematic, likely due in part to muscle wasting that masks the classic symptoms of fast breathing and chest indrawing. NIRS is non-invasive and portable, and can rapidly measure tissue oxygenation levels, which will be reduced by oxidative stress in children with malnutrition. They will collect arm muscle saturation data using NIRS on 200 children under five years old admitted for lung infections at a clinic in Uganda, and use the data to design a prototype device and protocols for identifying at risk children.

Paul Barrow of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom will identify bacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) that can reduce the presence of multiple pathogenic bacteria in the gut to restore healthy bacterial populations (microbiome) and help treat diarrheal diseases. They will characterize phage specificity for three major pathogens that infect both humans and pigs, and select those that are less likely to cause the development of resistance. As pigs are a valuable model for diarrheal diseases in children, they will test the selected phage in their pig enteric model to evaluate their ability to reduce pathogen numbers and restore a healthy gut microbiome.

Joshua Blumenstock of the University of Washington in the U.S. will combine data on mobile phone call details and mobile money use with photographs taken of local infrastructures such as electricity supply, to map access to and use of digital financial services in Ghana. They have access to vast anonymized datasets on phone and mobile money transactions in Ghana, and a technology platform developed by Premise that collects photographs and observations from local citizens to measure economic and social infrastructures. They will develop a method to combine these data and apply standard machine learning in order to measure access to digital financial services across the country.

Pavan Dadlani of Phillips Research in The Netherlands will create a handheld three-dimensional scanner that can automatically analyze body shape and assess malnutrition in young children, which is a strong risk factor for mortality associated with a variety of common diseases. Current physical measurements of children to assess nutritional status are time-consuming, uncomfortable for the child, and difficult to take accurately, particularly in low-resource settings. They will develop and test an algorithm for measuring height, upper arm length, and circumference of the head, belly and upper arm from a three dimensional image, by collecting data from children between 0 and 5 years old. They will also produce a user-friendly design for health workers by conducting a field analysis in low-resource settings.

Heverton Dutra of Centro de Pesquisas René Rachou, FIOCRUZ in Brazil will develop an artificial diet based on protein and fat to sustain mosquitoes infected with the Wolbachia bacteria, which are needed in large numbers to prevent transmission of the dengue virus. These mosquitoes are currently being bred using vertebrate blood, which is difficult to obtain and store, and subject to stringent regulations. They will test variations of cholesterol and amino acids combined with the mixture of bovine serum albumin and phagostimulant that is known to support egg production in non-infected mosquitoes, on egg numbers laid by Wolbachia-infected females. The diet is relatively low cost and comprises widely available ingredients that could be used to support mass-rearing of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes.

Kevin Esvelt of President and Fellows of Harvard College in the U.S. will use CRISPR technology to make protective healthy bacteria resistant to phage so they can outcompete pathogenic bacteria that cause childhood diarrhea and stunting. He will develop a method to make the protective Nissle 1917 strain of E. coli resistant to a range of phage, and use it to replace native E. coli strains in the guts of young mice as a model for human infants. This approach will provide long-term protection against pathogenic bacterial infections at low cost.

Ruth Foster of TIWA, LLC in the U.S. will develop a finance application tool using money pictures to enable illiterate users to make accurate transactions. They will design and test a tablet with touch screen and build associated software for consumers that can be used to scan barcodes, or manually add products and prices. The final cost of the purchases will be automatically displayed using images of real money, which the consumer can then use to pay the correct amount.

Joe Gallagher together with Chris Watson of University College Dublin in Ireland will develop a method to quickly and accurately diagnose bacterial pneumonia in children with acute respiratory infections so that the correct treatments can be given. Physical symptoms of bacterial pneumonia are similar to many other diseases including malaria but they require vastly different treatments. They will use a screening approach to identify protein, metabolite or miRNA biomarkers of bacterial pneumonia in blood and urine samples from 500 children in Malawi clinics with a known diagnosis of pneumonia. The most specific biomarker panel will be combined with a selected panel of symptoms such as heart and breathing rate to generate a highly sensitive clinical prediction model that specifically diagnoses bacterial pneumonia and can be used in low- to middle-income countries.

Jean-Claude Gouesse of Ecash Express in Canada will promote the use of mobile money in the Ivory Coast by establishing mobile money payment options for merchants to purchase supplies, and providing a free prepaid debit card for customers to pay for goods. When merchants can use mobile money to buy their own goods, they may also be more willing to receive mobile money payments from their own customers, particularly if they earn commission. They will build a user-friendly interface, and evaluate uptake by issuing 10,000 prepaid cards that can be loaded at participating retail stores, and providing 500 free, low-end Android devices to merchants for accepting payments.

Patricia Hibberd of Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. will develop a low-cost thermal imaging system for a smart phone to diagnose bacterial pneumonia in children from developing countries where the standard chest X-ray is often unavailable. They predict that children with pneumonia specifically caused by bacteria will have asymmetric “hot spots” of high temperatures in the lungs caused by localized inflammation. They will perform a proof-of-concept study in children under age 5 with chest infections in a large hospital in Malawi using the FLIR One Thermal Imaging System attached to a smartphone. At least 10 thermal images will be taken, and two short videos to record breathing rate, and the data will be used to develop statistical approaches for the required analytics. They will evaluate performance for diagnosing pneumonia by comparing it to the standard chest X-ray.

Lori Holtz of Washington University in the U.S. will analyze the composition of bacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) in the gut of young children to see if it is linked with the chronic inflammatory gut condition, environmental enteropathy, which is highly prevalent in low-income countries and is linked to malnutrition and stunted growth. They will perform metagenomic sequencing on available fecal samples taken over a 6-month period from 489 children under age two from Malawi who were tested for gut dysfunction. They will analyze both RNA and DNA bacteriophage populations as well as the bacterial microbiome and evaluate their association with each other and with the development of environmental enteropathy. Specific bacteriophage associated with the presence or absence of the disease could lead to the development of new treatments.

Heba Khamis of the University of New South Wales in Australia will use smartphone technology to more accurately measure malnutrition in children from developing countries, which puts them at increased risk of death from diseases such as pneumonia. They will develop an image-processing algorithm for calculating three key growth parameters (height, and arm and head circumference) and thereby assessing nutritional status from a photograph of a child taken by a smartphone. They will recruit twenty children to help refine the algorithm and the protocol for taking the photograph, which will then be validated on an independent set of children.

Anika Kinkhabwala of EpiBiome in the U.S. will exploit the development of resistance to bacteriophage by pathogenic bacteria to improve children’s gut health. Bacteriophage recognize proteins and other molecules found on the surface of bacteria, which they use to infect and kill them. They will identify bacteriophage isolated from fecal and sewage samples that can target virulence structures on the surface of the pathogenic bacteria enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) and Shigella dysenteriae, which are common diarrhea-causing bacteria. Faced with such bacteriophage, pathogenic bacterial populations would become enriched with mutants that escaped phage infection by virtue of having lost these virulence factors, with resistant bacteria thereby less harmful to humans. They will characterize how these bacteria develop resistance to specific phage and build a cocktail of phage that target different bacterial virulence structures to further weaken pathogenic bacteria and help cure diarrheal disease.

Ken Kinyua of Kopo Kopo Inc. in the U.S. has developed a software platform that gives particularly lower-income merchants in Uganda the possibility to receive every type of mobile money service on the market by registering with only one bank. This will promote the use of mobile money, which will also benefit the banks and mobile network operators, and both simplify and secure transactions for both the merchants and the consumers. They have licensed their software to a partner bank and will support implementation and uptake by providing personnel to establish the necessary services and expertise, and by advertising the facility to prospective merchants.

Ernest Makotsi of Wayo Company Ltd. in Kenya will develop a mechanism for customers to provide immediate feedback on their retail experiences in Nairobi using mobile phones. Real-time feedback is thought to be more attractive for users and more valuable for providers, and having a mobile phone interface means feedback can be provided and analyzed from any location. They have developed the program, and will set up the technology in regional retail shops that provide digital financial services and advertise the event to promote customer participation. The data can be used by retailers to improve their customer services, and be sold to interested parties.

Corinne Maurice of McGill University in Canada will use an ecological approach to determine whether bacteriophage (phage), which are viruses that infect bacteria, could be used to restore healthy microbial communities in the gut and thereby reduce stunting in children. They will collect stool samples from infants under two years old from Bangladesh, and compare the types of phage and bacteria found in stunted versus healthy children. Phage from healthy children will be used to infect bacteria from stunted children, and vice versa, to analyze how specific phage affect gut microbes under different conditions, which will demonstrate their potential for treating disease.

Enoma Odia of Sofdia System Nigeria in Nigeria will apply network marketing to promote the uptake of mobile money by offering financial rewards to merchants for recommending it to other merchants within their community. This marketing system leverages the communal style of living, where the residing merchants sell similar products and share the same language. When a recommendation to use mobile money comes from a merchant in the same community, and the rewards for referrals are shared between users, it is more likely to be accepted. They will use their m-square platform, evaluate the most effective compensation levels to promote uptake, and add an accounting system for users to monitor their income.

Geraldine O’Keeffe of Software Group KE Ltd. in Kenya will develop a smartphone application so that smaller merchants in developing economies can use one system to receive mobile money from customers with different providers, and can digitally track sales and inventory. They will also explore options for subsidizing the technology including offering the generated data to financial service providers and others. Their approach will allow merchants to easily register online to encourage uptake, also reducing recruitment costs. They will customize their mobile application for the Kenyan market, integrate it with existing payment service providers, and perform a pilot study over 3-4 months with 25-50 merchants to evaluate functionality and usage for refining the platform.

Neil Patel of AwaazDe Infosystems Pvt Ltd in India will produce interactive podcasts that are sent by mobile phone to inform local users in India on relevant financial services and to collect their feedback on specific issues in audio form, making it more widely accessible. The feedback will be used to monitor financial habits, and help identify barriers to usage and ways to improve services. The interactive podcast platform can also be supplemented with optional features such as balance inquiries or loan repayment reminders. AwaazDe (“give voice”) will tailor the technology, and work with partners to pilot test the podcasts and collect data first in 10 villages in India, followed by scaling up to 50,000 users.

Jonathan Rubin of the University of Michigan in the U.S. will develop a simple, low-cost ultrasound device with cell phone display that can diagnose children with co-existing pneumonia and malnutrition. Over two million children per year die from pneumonia, and many of these deaths are caused by coexisting malnutrition. They will design an ultrasound stethoscope device to automatically measure lung expansion and contraction during breathing to detect ventilation problems caused by pneumonia as well as the levels of subcutaneous fat on the chest wall to detect malnutrition. The device will be tailored for use by a minimally-trained health worker and the results reported on the display by a numeric readout. They will test the adapted ultrasound device in the laboratory, and gather population data to determine the normal distribution of fat thickness in the chest wall for estimating nutritional status.

Punit Shah of OkHi in Kenya will build a platform to provide up-to-date information on financial access endpoints such as ATM locations by crowdsourcing data from smartphones from a network of users. Current tech-based data collection tools are not ideal as they are generally expensive, and the data quickly become outdated. They will build an app and run a 6-month pilot test by providing locked smart phones with limited functions to potential data collectors in Nairobi, one smaller city and one rural location. As data collectors complete set collection missions using their phones, more functions will be unlocked until the user becomes the owner of the phone, whereby subsequent missions are rewarded with free airtime. The data will be analyzed to determine the frequency of updates, and integrated with open data platforms to broadly disseminate the information and enhance its value.

Harsh Shetty of Firefish Networks Pvt. Ltd. in India will provide a service – mLakshmi – for merchants using SMS to give credit to low-income customers and reduce their credit risk. Merchants and customers will register with the service and customers will receive regular SMS notifications of their credit balances, which they can use to pay for goods. They will promote uptake by rewarding merchants both for using the service and for recruiting customers, and the customers with good credit repayment histories will be eligible for more credit. They will develop the software platform and run pilot studies to refine the software and evaluate uptake.

Stan Stalnaker of Hub Culture Services Ltd. in the United Kingdom will provide the global poor, merchants and partner NGOs with easy access to digital currency for making and receiving payments or distributing aid, with no transaction costs using mobile phones. The digital currency can be exchanged for a local currency for a fee using a Gateway Broker, who can be any merchant, NGO or bank. They will develop a new open-source set of APIs (application programming interface), and simple consumer and merchant interfaces using mostly icons so that people can easily register and transfer payments.

Daniel Swale of Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in the U.S. will develop a trap to attract and kill pregnant Anopheles mosquitoes and their larvae, which transmit malaria. They will identify the best compound for attracting pregnant females based on either the known attractant Cedrol, a sugar-based attractant, or CO2. They will also test whether the larval development inhibitor triflumuron, alone or in combination with a potassium ion channel inhibitor, can be effectively transferred to the traps by mosquitoes from resting chambers, and destroy the residing larvae. The most promising combinations will be evaluated in a semi-field environment with the common malaria mosquito in southeast United States.

Curtis Vanderpuije, Kodjo Hesse and team from expressPay Ghana Ltd. in Ghana will develop a low-cost, contactless device for merchants in developing countries to more easily accept and process mobile money transactions. They will design the device so it can read identifying information from merchants and customers using radio-frequency identification, and use unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) to communicate with existing mobile money providers. Being contactless, it will speed up mobile money transactions, which currently take several minutes, and its simplicity will make it more accessible to customers. To encourage use, they will refund part of the cost of the device when a certain number of mobile money transactions are made per month.

David Wang of Washington University in St. Louis in the U.S. will evaluate specific RNA bacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) as therapeutics to modulate the bacterial communities in inflammatory conditions such as environmental enteropathy. To date, only DNA phage have been explored as therapeutics despite RNA phage being able to kill a broader range of bacteria. They will test the effect of two prototypical RNA phage on the gut microbe population in a mouse model of intestinal inflammation. They will also use stool samples from children with environmental enteropathy to identify novel resistance genes that block the bactericidal effect of the RNA phage, which will help gauge their value as potential therapeutics.

Bradley Willenberg at the University of Central Florida Research Foundation in the U.S. will design a simple trap that works without electricity to help survey local vector mosquito populations and uses a color change to signal the presence of human disease-causing pathogens. They will develop a formulation based on toxic sugared water to attract specific types of mosquitoes to the trap. The sugar water will be mixed with a stable short nucleic acid sequence known as an aptamer, which they have designed to bind to the chikungunya virus, conjugated to gold nanoparticles. When a mosquito drinks the solution, its abdomen will turn blue if it is carrying this virus, and red if it isn’t, for an easy visual readout. They will test the performance of their device for attracting and killing the Aedes mosquito, and detecting the virus. Their approach could be used to detect other pathogens such as dengue virus and the malaria-causing Plasmodium parasite.

Paul Young of the University of Queensland in Australia will monitor mosquito populations using ultra bright nanoparticles coated with selected monoclonal antibodies to detect associated microbes such as Wolbachia, coupled with a low-cost readout device. The goal is a simple to use, portable platform that can be used in the field. They will develop the assay using a range of infected mosquitoes to identify the optimal antibody and nanoparticle format for rapid and specific detection, and evaluate sensitivity.

Brandyce St. Laurent of the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. will test whether cow-baited tents can be used to monitor and control disease-causing mosquitoes in the Greater Mekong Subregion. Most Anopheles mosquitoes preferentially bite animals, but they still contribute to malaria transmission in humans, and many bite outdoors, rendering bednets and indoor repellants useless against them. They will produce low-cost tents treated with insecticide, and locally rent cows as bait. The tents will be set up in both villages and forests and the captured mosquitoes will be analyzed to evaluate the efficacy of their approach.

Flora Myamba of Repoa Ltd. in Tanzania will evaluate different methods for motivating women to use mobile financial services by performing a randomized control trial in Tanzania. Access to mobile money platforms in developing countries can help alleviate poverty, but many people, particularly women, do not own a mobile phone, and if they do, it is unclear whether they will use it for financial purposes. They will recruit 2,000 low-income women in Tanzania and provide them with different types of mobile phones and data packages to determine which combination leads to the biggest uptake of digital financial services, and analyze how it improves the welfare of women.

Marcos Augusto Bastos Dias from Fiocruz in Brazil in collaboration with the Global Pregnancy Collaboration (CoLab) will test a new approach for managing women in Brazil with preeclampsia in order to reduce unnecessary preterm births. Preeclampsia is characterized by high blood pressure and impaired organ function during pregnancy and can cause severe complications or even death for mother and child. The only cure is delivery, but preterm births are also high risk. In Brazil preeclampsia accounts for far more preterm deliveries than in higher income countries who more readily choose medication to reduce the severity of the disease, and help delay delivery. The study includes seven geographically diverse hospitals with 23 satellite community health centres over four years. They will train staff to adopt the WHO guidelines for preventing preeclampsia and introduce a method for identifying low-risk women whose pregnancies can be safely prolonged. The study will also generate data and biological samples that can be used to help better stratify risk and understand the disease, which could further improve clinical management and lead to new treatments.

Ricardo Tavares Pinheiro from the Universidade Católica de Pelotas in Brazil will identify factors that are associated with gestational depression, and determine whether they influence their response to treatment and ultimately the healthy development of the child. Gestational and postpartum anxiety and depression affect 15-25% of mothers and can alter the emotional, social and cognitive development of the child. They are likely caused by a complex combination of genetic, hormonal, psychological and social/environmental factors. Only a handful of risk factors, including the levels of proinflammatory molecules, have been identified. The study will involve around 1250 pregnant women who will be evaluated by psychologists to ascertain their mental state. Blood and buccal cell samples will be collected to analyze the presence of candidate risk markers (specific proteins and microRNAs) and genetic polymorphisms (specific DNA sequences) to identify those associated with depression. They will also determine the relationship between these psychological and physiological factors and the subsequent motor and neurocognitive development of the born children. Clinical studies will also evaluate the efficacy of several modified therapeutic approaches centered on cognitive behavioral therapy, which involves guiding the patient to modify any distorted thinking and can be effective in depressed mothers.

Iná da Silva dos Santos from the Universidade Federal de Pelotas in Brazil will develop a simple, low-cost strategy targeting mothers to ensure young children get enough sleep. Inadequate sleep is more common in children from low-resource households, and can negatively impact their physical and mental health, including their cognitive development. Children can be encouraged to sleep well by creating a restful environment and helping them learn to get to sleep by themselves. They will perform a randomized controlled study with around 500 mothers of infants aged three months. One group of mothers will be taught about normal sleep behavior during the first year of life and how to encourage their child to sleep. The effect of this intervention on sleep duration, growth and neurodevelopment will be analyzed over a 24-month period. Sleep duration will be monitored by actigraphy to ensure accuracy.

Guilherme Vanoni Polanczyk from Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil will test their new method Pixel Averages for Auxological Assessment (PIXA3) that enables parents at home to frequently and precisely measure height during early childhood to help better detect and monitor growth defects in low-resource settings. The current standard for accurately measuring height requires specialized equipment and trained staff, and is thus unsuitable for frequent application. Their new method involves using a smartphone to take multiple photographs of an individual next to an internal standard of known size, and doesn’t require cross-sectional population norms, which have complicated current methods of longitudinally assessing growth. They will perform a randomized controlled trial in São Paulo to test the feasibility of their method and determine how accurate it is compared to traditional growth measures taken at a health clinic.

Bioceptive aims to expand access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) for the estimated 222 million women around the world with an unmet need for modern family planning resources. The discreet intrauterine device (IUD) is one of the most applicable LARC methods for global use due to its long term of use, high efficacy, and minimal user effort. However, IUD access is frequently limited because the insertion procedure is complicated and only carried out by highly trained physicians. Bioceptive has developed a novel, reusable, sterilizable IUD inserter that makes the procedure simpler and intuitive and allows any healthcare worker to confidently insert an IUD with minimal training, thus using improved technology to overcome existing barriers to service delivery.

In collaboration with the Rwandan Ministry of Health National Research Laboratory, and our on the ground implementing partners, Nanobiosym will reduce HIV related deaths in infants by scaling up access to its novel POC nanodiagnostic platform by validating Nanobiosym's proprietary Point-of-Care Gene-RADAR diagnostic platform's ability to measure HIV positive mothers' viral load thereby ensuring they are responding to ART and reducing their chances of transmitting HIV to their child in-utero, at birth, or during the breastfeeding period.

The objective of the study is to evaluate the safety and feasibility of the Odon device, a low cost, easy to use technological innovation, in assisting vaginal delivery in singleton term pregnancies during the second stage of labor. Interim evaluation of the device for safety and feasibility showed no major severe adverse events among women or infants enrolled in the study. The experience suggests that the device is easy to use and allows successful expulsion of the baby. The Odon device could play a major role in improving intrapartum obstetric care in the most vulnerable populations with the least access to well-trained specialists, extraction procedures or timely caesarean section.

Lack of fast, affordable delivery of blood profoundly restricts the number of lifesaving transfusions performed in the Dodoma region. We will use an autonomous Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) called Stork to transport screened and typed blood from a blood bank in Dodoma to peripheral health facilities, on-demand. In many cases, ground transport of blood would either be impossible or too costly using traditional means. Stork can already deliver over 1kg over 75km in less than 45 minutes at a cost of $10, outperforming all known alternatives.

Effective resuscitation could reduce intrapartum related neonatal deaths by 30%, and deaths from prematurity by 10%, creating the potential to save 347,200 babies annually. However, one in five trained healthcare professionals (HCPs) fail to perform the resuscitation technique correctly, and those that do, often experience a rapid decline in proficiency. Our Augmented Infant Resuscitator's advanced training capabilities, instant feedback mechanism, and objective self-audit and retraining abilities will maximize and sustain gains from effective resuscitation. The AIR prototype provides instant feedback to users about effective ventilation. This is measured using inexpensive instrumentation that calculates ventilation rate, air volume and air pressure delivered by the bag-valve-mask (BVM) across the resuscitation face-mask. These parameters correlate with the four most common mistakes that result in ineffective resuscitation: 1) Failed seal at the face-mask interface resulting in failure to inflate the lungs; 2) Blocked airways; and 3) Wrong ventilation frequency 4) Insufficient/shallow lung inflation. Each of these mistakes can cause death or brain damage. AIR also records performance on an internal memory card for future feedback, improving HCPs training by identifying persistent gaps in technique.

Peter Marschik from the Medical University of Graz in Austria will develop a mobile phone app to assess general movement in infants under 6 months of age for diagnosing neurological defects and predicting the development of abnormalities particularly in low-resource settings. General movement assessments (GMA) reflect the functioning of the developing brain and are normally made by video recording the whole body of an infant over 3-5 minutes followed by expert analysis. To expand access of this technique to developing countries, he will develop software for a smart phone to capture the general movements of an infant, and to relay the acquired data directly to a GM expert for immediate diagnosis and to plan any required treatment.