SimpliStock

Empowering frontline workers to save lives in their communities by ending stock-outs of lifesaving health commodities.

The Problem:

Every single day, people die from preventable diseases because they did not get the medicine or diagnostic test that could have saved their lives. The problem I am committing to solving is eliminating stock outs of these life saving medical commodities.

I spent years working on the health workforce shortage and supply chain challenges in Malawi and Liberia. I am deeply passionate about supporting health workers to deliver care to those who need it most. Every single day brave, frontline health workers - trained to provide primary healthcare in rural communities - are unable to do so because they have stocked out of life saving medicines.

There are numerous reasons why this happens. In my experience, it almost always stems from a lack of data available to health workers, their supervisors, and managers throughout the supply chain. Quite simply, the data that determines how much medicine is needed, what kind, where and by when is recorded on paper that infrequently makes its way to the people in charge of ensuring the availability of these commodities.

The Solution:

I propose to develop SimpliStock – supply chain software designed with frontline health workers in mind. Existing solutions are not designed to easily and affordably enable frontline health workers to manage stock levels of their health commodities. In response, Ministries of Health and NGOs either have to maintain the status quo where data never reaches decision-makers on time, or are forced to make heavy upfront investments for tailored solutions that often lack interoperability and are expensive to deploy and maintain.

SimpliStock will be interoperable, affordable, rapidly deployable and easy-to-use. SimpliStock will enable every smartphone equipped health worker to easily track stock consumption that will quickly sync with the cloud through multiple pathways (data, SMS, Bluetooth). Supervisors will know when to re-stock their health clinics or frontline health workers. Supply chain managers will have the decision-support and data they need to make procurement, storage and distribution decisions to ensure stock availability. Governments, donors and drug manufacturers can access high level, aggregate data to understand supply chain performance and product demand.

The Impact:

Digital health innovations have failed to gain traction in global health for two main reasons. First, Ministries of Health and NGOs have been convinced they need tailored digital solutions but they often do not reach the scale necessary to have a high ROI. Second, they require high upfront costs in technical experts to develop a solution and maintain it over time.

SimpliStock is not only an application that solves a consequential supply chain problem, but it is an experiment in upending the paradigm of how global health innovations are delivered. SimpliStock puts governments, NGOs and health providers in the driver seat – not expensive technical experts. 

Perhaps digital innovations would finally gain traction in global health if they were delivered in a way that empowered local stakeholders by being easy-to-use, affordable to test, rapid to deploy at scale and interoperable with existing information systems.

SimpliStock is an off-the-shelf, turnkey solution to supply chain management but designed with frontline health workers in mind. It will be affordable: It does not require software developers to develop or systems experts to customize. It will be interoperable with OpenLMIS and other health information systems commonly used. It will be easy to set up and deploy – simply installing an app on a phone or tablet. These principles are uncommon in global health with an overemphasis on customization that limits the potential of governments to afford and scale digital health innovations.

Before the advent of smartphones, an innovation like SimpliStock was unthinkable. Today, health workers are equipped with smartphones and SimpliStock is just a tap away. 

SimpliStock will use sophisticated machine learning to enable supply chain managers to make optimal commodity forecasting, procurement, storage and distribution decisions. This decision-support will also reach the frontlines, informing health workers and their supervisors when medicines need to be restocked before they run out.

SimpliStock will leverage two of the largest revolutions in technology – smartphones and machine learning – to revolutionize how medicines are delivered to the people who need it most.

My solution's goals in the next 12 months are:

1. To turn the current prototype into a fully usable Android application.
2. Field test the application in partnership with NGOs in two or three different geographies.
3. Build in basic interoperability with commonly used health information systems in sub-Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia.

In order for SimpliStock to affect the lives of more people, it needs to be in the hands of more health workers.

First, I will provide SimpliStock to an initial group of NGOs at a discount.

Second, I will recruit these NGOs as key opinion leaders to encourage Ministries of Health to adopt SimpliStock at national scale.

Third, I plan to partner with major global donors of life saving medical commodities like Gavi, the Global Fund and USAID. In exchange for subsidizing Ministries to adopt SimpliStock, they will gain greater assurance over the management of the medical commodities they donate.

SimpliStock will be deployed by NGOs and Ministries of Health that manage and oversee health programs. With support from SimpliStock, NGOs will equip and train health workers to use the app. SimpliStock will also train field supervisors and supply chain managers to use the dashboard and decision-support tools. SimpliStock will expect to retain these users by remaining affordable and responsive to the feedback of their users and offer ongoing training that enables them to get the most from it. ROI analyses that demonstrate the benefits of reduced stock-outs to governments, donors and NGOs will help in retaining them as customers.

SimpliStock is a prototype currently not in use by end users. 

SimpliStock expects to be serving 100 health workers, 10 field supervisors and 2 supply chain manager across 2 NGOs in 12 months. I expect to recruit two NGOs in different geographies to pilot the prototype with a subset of their health workers.

SimpliStock expects to be serving 10,000 health workers, 100 field supervisors and 10 supply chain managers across 5 NGOs and 1 Ministry of Health. I expect to have recruited additional NGOs and to have partnered with 1 Ministry of Health to start deploying SimpliStock to their health workers.

I have a deep understanding of the complexity of health systems and supply chain systems as they relate to delivering healthcare in low and middle income countries. I have also spent a number of years in business development building NGO and government relationships that will be key in driving early adoption. Finally, I have experience bringing diverse stakeholders together to address numerous global health challenges. That coalition building will serve as a valuable skill in translating early adoption of SimpliStock to a more significant level of scale.

SimpliStock will have two main drivers of revenue:

1. A subscription-based revenue model where the cost per user will decline as the number of users increases. It will be free for organizations with less than 100 users, which will encourage adoption among smaller NGOs who can play a disproportionately valuable role as key opinion leaders for broader government scale.
2. SimpliStock will provide deployment support to NGOs and Ministries of Health. This will involve supporting training, deployment and improving interoperability with existing systems.

Taken together, these two revenue streams will enable SimpliStock to grow while remaining less financially burdensome to customers than the status quo of deploying customized digital health solutions that involves heavy upfront and maintenance solutions.

Solve offers an opportunity to connect with other innovators looking to upend paradigms in their specific industries. SimpliStock is attempting to solve a problem that has long existed in global health that will only be solved through a shift in mindset and a commitment to technology. That will be no easy feat, and addressing it requires a network of innovators, thought leaders and influencers that only the Solve initiative can bring. 

• Inertia to technology adoption – Solve can help me identify strategies to overcome inertia and skepticism in adopting new technologies to solve problems.
• Funding and business model – with NGOs and governments from low income countries as targets, finding innovative strategies to drive adoption while ensuring a sustainable business model for SimpliStock.
• Strategic partnerships – partnerships with MIT and other influencers will strengthen the product but also drive credibility which is necessary at this early stage.