INFIUSS HEALTH

72% of health care facilities in Africa, do not have blood banks while those that have are constantly empty or understocked.INFIUSS Health is a blood-bank management platform and blood donor biobank.We partner with blood banks to recruit and follow up blood donors so they have a constant supply of blood and also provide consented samples for biobanking purposes. We collect, store, analyse and categorise donor samples which are declassified and the data made available to researchers for biomedical studies and pharmaceutical companies who use it during drug and vaccine discovery.Our goal is to facilitate a contemporary approach towards recruiting cohorts for biomedical studies, environmental determinants of common diseases and aid in the inclusion of African genetic material in drug/vaccine discovery. The work we are doing is important because only 2% of African genetic material is available for biomedical research despite it being the most genetically diverse continent in the world.

WHO estimates that, over 970.000 people die from blood shortages in Africa with The Sub- Saharan region being most affected. 72% of health care facilities do not have blood banks while those that have are constantly empty and under stocked. 1 in 6 patients in need of blood transfusions dies due to the unavailability of blood. 60% of this number comprises of pregnant women suffering from complications such as post-partum haemorrhage, and miscarriages, and children under the age of 5 suffering from anaemia. Not only are patients uninformed on where to find blood but after locating a blood bank, the patient is required bring 3 replacement donors(to secure 1 bag), as the blood bank do not want to run out of blood. 

We've built a blood donor recruitment and follow up service, which recruits new blood blood and follows up directly with regular blood donors so as to ensure hospitals have a constant supply of blood. We then saw this as an opportunity to advance biomedical research, as we leverage on our donor's to provide consented samples for our blood donor biobank. 

We’ve built software comprising of a database of various blood banks, complete with the type and quantity of blood available in the blood bank. This permits us to help patients locate the blood they need for transfusion upon request via our app, phone call or sms.

Our blood donor tele-recruitment and digital follow-up service enables us to provide direct follow up channels with  blood donors thus helping us maintain the blood supply chain fo these blood banks. 

Consenting blood donors go on to provide blood samples during transfusion for use in our biobank. We  collect, analyse, categorise, anonymise and store these samples which are then made available for research by our research team and research partners including pharmaceutical companies for biomedical studies and drug discovery.

With over 150million africans requiring blood transfusions yearly, and the increasing problem of acute blood shortages plaguing our blood banks and hospitals, there is the need to provide sustainable solution to address this problem of blood availability and accessibility. 

INFIUSS health, which was developed as my final research in Nursing school sets out to ensure that we done not only provide an opportunity for patients to have access to life saving blood/blood components, but also believe that these blood donors who so willingly come in to donate blood to save lives will go on to donate samples to advance research. 

Recruiting cohorts for studies is the most challenging reason as to why African get left behind in research studies. Blood donors present a fitting group for recruiting healthy and diversified cohorts for large biomedical and genetic studies.We want to catalyse the representation of  African genetic material in clinical and drug discovery studies and help in empowering African researchers to be competitive in biomedical and genomic sciences, by changing the way they recruit cohorts for their studies. These studies which will then go on to generate unique data that could be used to improve both African and global health.    

With pools of genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2 from all over the world are currently being studied by scientists is a vaccine is eventually discovered (based on the sequences pool available),Africa may end up with the ‘Rotaviruses Vaccine Problem',which refers to the efficacy variation observed with vaccines developed for use against rotavirus, (leading cause of severe diarrhoea).The vaccines happened to be effective in Europe and North America but less effective as it was not tested on Africans.

We want to avoid such problems by encouraging research on African genomic material which can be used to prepare and strengthen our healthcare systems.

Across sub-saharan Africa, we have other providers such as Lifebank in Nigeria (in Nigeria), Zipline in Rwanda. In north Africa, there are initiatives such as synthego but this only operates in North Africa and does not solve the problem of sub Saharan DNA representation. There are no other Blood donor biobank initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa, 

Our unique proposition of leveraging blood donors as blood sample donors, gives us an edge over our competitors as we are practically changing the way Africans are recruited for genetic studies, while still serving our population of patients who require blood for transfusions.

What makes us different  has been our ability to solve 2 major problems with one solution. There is the problem of the availability of blood/blood components in blood banks and hospitals and making this blood available to the patients who need them the most. There is also the problem of the lack and unavailability of Genomic material from Africans in biomedical research as drug discovery.These problems faced by these 2 seemingly unrelated fields have however proven that these problems can be addressed by the same group of individuals, which are blood donors.

We’ve built software comprising of a database of various blood banks,complete with the type and quantity of blood available in the blood bank. This permits us to help patients locate the blood they need for transfusion upon request via our app or phone call.Our donor tele-recruitment and digital follow-up service that enables us to provided direct follow up to blood donors via an Android mobile app that helps with donor recruitment and follow up in addition to voice call and sms options for those without smart phones. 

We also have data labelling and classification technology which is being build in-house to help with data sampling and analysis so as to provide the highest quality data to researchers and scientist at their request. We are developing this data labelling technology from scratch as existing ones on the market do not cater to African genomic datasets, which takes into consideration, geo-localisation, ethnic backgrounds and other environmental factors. Our hope is that this technology can go on to be integrated into advanced machine learning platforms so that future research on Africans can be made easier.

We launched 26 months ago and have secured over 16000 bags of blood across 55 hospitals in 8 regions across 2 countries; Cameroon and Cote D'ivoire. Directly providing life saving blood/blood components to over 20000 patients. 

We have have a blood donor database of over 13000 people and over 3000 lablled blood samples in our bio bank which was opened 11 months ago. 

We are into partnerships with the Ministries of public health in Cameroon and Ivory Coast to facilitate our expansion into 250 blood banks in Cameroon. This expansion is going to help us reach over 100000 patients in the 10months.

While in Nursing school I got to work in hospitals across 3 countries in Africa and I one of the biggest problems I notices was the problem of access to blood and blood components.  

Blood banks constantly empty or under-stocked, and requiring patients in need of transfusions to bring in 3 replacement donors. So we set out to solve this problem of making blood available and accessible. While working with blood donors, we realised that we were working with a very unique group of people. Men and women who would show up on a whim just to selflessly do something for a complete stranger they make never meet. We carried out a market research to understand if they were also willing to donate blood samples for medical research and they accepted, provided it happened during the  donation process and they dint have to make multiple trips to the hospitals. Blood donors present a fitting group for recruiting healthy and diversified cohorts for large biomedical and genetic studies. 

Even patients that had received transfusions consented to providing samples for our biobank.  My Theory of change is that we can solve the immediate symptom of the problem which is that of blood shortages while also helping long term problems through medical research. So by recruiting blood dontrs for transfusions, we are also helping researchers recruit cohorts they need for their studies.

Over 50000 patients have benefited form our services across 3 countries. Our goal over the next 12 months is to reach over 200000 beneficiaries directly through our Services of donor sourcing and blood delivery and over 400000 indirectly through our research partners. Over the next 5 years, we intend for our solution to benefit over 20million people across the African continent as we continue to ensure that blood banks remain stocked and continue to expand our strategies for the recruitment of clinical research cohorts, so that it no longer only includes blood donors but also clinically ill patients.

We want to focus on strengthening our operation in Cameroon, Cote D'ivoire and Nigeria over the next 12 months. And then move into 4 other countries (, Senegal and Kenya and Rwanda and South Africa) over the next 18-24 months. Our goal is to be operational in at least 15 countries. 

Within the next 5 years. Our ultimate goal is to develop, maintain and sustain state-of-the-art world class Bio repositories for the responsible storage, maintenance, and custodianship of well-annotated high-quality Bio specimens and to make these specimens available to researchers for genomic discovery and other biomedical research that can contain over 1 million specimens. We intend to do by not only focusing on blood donors but also expanding our pool of research charts to include clinically ill patients who are most in need of new therapies. 

We want to build the most genetically diverse bio repository in Africa which will include specimens from every country and will enable researchers provide better healthcare to the over 1 billion Africans on the continent.

Government Policies: regulatory policies change constantly with different markets and these take a lot of time to fullfill.

Access to Mentorship: It has been difficult to find local mentors who understand this concept of Social entrepreneurship. Being able to get people who can hod your hand and provide advice have experience on how to build world class services has been another hurdle for us.

Access to funding: We have had a lot of difficulty raising adequate funding to propel our activities We currently do not have a testing laboratory and have to outsource testing our blood to other independent laboratories. This also hinders our ability to bring in A list talent.

Corona virus; The current pandemic has put a dect into our operations has put a dent on our operations which some of the areas being in complete shut down. Although we get authorisation to operate as an essential medical service, this has reduced the number of patients getting admitted or willign to go into in hospitals.

To mitigate these risks. we partner with governments and provide CSR such as blood delivery and other supporting services to help them provide better health care for their citizens. Biobank operations are only performed upon receiving the necessary ethical clearance by research access committees. We have designed robust scientific protocols working with clinical and genetic experts. Recruitment of donors is only be completed after proper informed consent has been received from the participants.

We work work contentiously with local government and civil society organisations such as National blood transfusion programs and USAID and Safe Blood for Africa to provide education in communities on the importance of donating blood also provide non monetary compensations,which acts as motivation to encourage people to become blood donors.Bringing in A list talent as a startup is really hard and so we are fundraising to be able to bring in the right technical talent.

We are a 23 man team. Made up of 16 full time staff and 7 part time staff.

We are a team of highly motivated individuals with backgrounds in healthcare, software development and product development. Together, we bring together over 30 years of experience working in various organisations such as Medtronic, Johnson and Johnson and Pierre Fabre. We have Stanford trained bio design engineers who also work part with our team to make up for technical gaps and bring in world class experience,

We are small and dynamic team of passionate individual and even we are a young startup with ever changing rules, we come together to develop the best services and practices to fulfil our mission of Advancing health and transforming lives.

Our partnerships with the Ministries of Public Health in Cameroon and Cote D'ivoire offer us Institutional partner which has granted us facilitated access, into 908 public hospitals in both countries.

Also by partnering with Digital health service providers like GiftedMom - working with over 200,000 pregnant women and mothers they refer our services to their moms so when they develop complications and need blood during delivery and finally working with Medical Students who encourage their patients to use our services. 

 We also work international development Organisations such as USAID, the US Embassy and Pepfer. As well as mobile operators such as Orange and MTN.

We have two major business models;

B2C:  By delivering blood directly to the patients who require blood transfusions. We charge them $80 fee per bag and a $20 transportation fee.

B2B: We are also targeting mostly private hospitals who need blood transported to them from other hospitals, once they experience shortages. We charge them a $1000 per year and serve as their blood bank.

 We also work with researchers and research institution who pay us to have access to our biobank database depending on the type and quantity of research data they want access to.

Commercial/Financial sustainability is of paramount importance to us. Although we  generate revenue, we are still not profitable. Our path to financial sustainability is through scale and we can archive this in the next 24-36 months if we can serve 1million Patients.

For us to this, we are putting in place very strategic partnerships to help us achieve this. Some of these include partnering with Governments, through the Ministries of Health and National Blood Transfusion Programs. This provides us access to new markets(countries).For technical partnerships, we work with PEPFER and Safe Blood For Africa which continue to help us improve our services as we scale.

We already generate revenue but are not profitable. Although countries have different policies and governing laws, the concept remains the same while taking in to account the context of the specific market. By forming strategic partnerships with governments and other technical partners, it gives us the leverage transition into these new markets and helps us move faster.

First of all as an African, this is my home and as a healthcare personnel, i have gotten to see health care systems at their worst. Because its home and because I am deeply passionate about health care and about Africa i have taken it as my responsibility to be the change i want to see. I gave up the hope of having a career abroad to stay back and continue to propose solutions to help my country and continent. Becoming a  solver, will give me the validation that i am not chasing fleeting dreams. In addition to doing work that truly matters with INFIUSS another dream of mine to inspire young women to pick up a career in entrepreneurship. I started at 20 with really no female role models to look up to. I want to be and also inspire more African girls in the fields of science and technology so that together we can go on to build the Africa of our dreams. 

What we are seeking from partners are those who will advise us on how to position ourselves to fundraise from the right investors, and possibly introduce us to some of these investors.

We are also looking for technical partners who can provide mentorship as we grow and scale our services.

We’re excited about being part of a peer network with organizations who are doing similar work. Through Solve’s global network, we want to learn from and meet with potential partners. We're looking to grow our institutional partners (both locally and internationally) but currently do not have networks to do so.

The work we do is to serve the the needs of a different patients who require our services for different reasons. For our blood sourcing services, we work with blood banks who then provide to patients requiring transfusions for reasons such as post partum hemorrhage, anemia, victims of road side accidents. patients undergoing dialysis and mush more. As a nurse I had to go back to working in the hospitals during the corona virus pandemic, so as help the health care worker burden. 

Although for the past two years I have dedicated my life and career to building INFIUSS while still ensuring that our beneficiaries still had access to the life saving blood they needed.

The interest in our bio bank soared with a researcher's wanting to work with convalescent plasma from covid-19 patients, and also working with convalescent donors to making this plasma Available in blood banks for more immune compromised patients. The job we do as health care workers and health care service providers has never been more important and wining this prize will help us advance this mission in our communities.

We are building our machine learning and AI platform for the labelling and classification of bio suppository data sets. This labelled datasets will go on top provide already labelled data to researchers and scientists.Our goal is to contuse to develop this platform o carry out even more advanced functions such as labelling genetic data set algorithms that can be applied in advance research. Winning this prize will help us bring on a goo team of data scientists and engineers to work on this platform and help us build the right technology that is tailored for our needs and can consequently be used world wide.

 More than 80% of our beneficiaries are pregnant women suffering from birth related complications and children suffering from severe childhood anemia, leukaemia, sickle cell anemia etc. We want to continue ensuring that these women and children have access to life saving blood when they need it the most. Through our donor recruitment platform, we have been able to provide life saving blood to over 15000 women and children and winning this prize will enable us recruit more donors who will go on to donate blood that we will help make available to them.

Wining the people prize will help gives us visibility and exposure, which will be beneficial as we continue to take our products and services. The prize money will also go towards donor recruitment and followup. It will also go towards to advancement of SDG 3 which is our commitment to provide good health and well being for all.