Agnes

When a woman dies during pregnancy, it deepens the cycle of poverty in her family. It is critical to end preventable maternal mortality to reduce the cycle of poverty.

To improve maternal health indices, inclusive health education is critical and access to medical care is important. Over 60% of women in Nigeria are illiterate or semi-literate. Many women are unable to get good quality health education or navigate the healthcare system as a result of limited/poor understanding of how to navigate the health system during pregnancy.

To combat this, we provide health education and guidance in native languages leveraging mobile technology. When we provided Agnes to women, we found that they were four times more likely to survive pregnancy. Since we launched operations in 2021, we have supported 1000+ women in over 50 communities in Yoruba and Pidgin. With this grant, we will increase our capacity to serve women in the communities we currently serve and also expand into locations. In particular, we would be able to:

- Offer our services in four additional additional languages. 

- Setup two additional telemedicine centers.

- Reach customers across West Africa.

- Procure critical equipment for the telemedicine centers.

To combat the issue of health illiteracy during pregnancy, our solution provides health education digitally on the phones that the women own already.

Our approach is innovative and inclusive in 3 ways:

i. It is provided in native African languages - this means language is not a barrier.

ii. The content is delivered without need for the internet. This ensures that data/internet affordability or access is not a barrier to health education.

iii. The content is available in audio-format so that illiteracy is not a barrier.

To address the issue of access to medical support, we provide round-the-clock toll free access to midwives and medical triage if necessary.

Our solution empowers women to:

•  be prepared for the reality of each stage of pregnancy; 
•  reach a health professional at any time; and 
• improve maternal and newborn health outcomes.

In the communities served so far, the women are 139% more likely to engage with the healthcare system leading to a 400% improvement in maternal survival. On a macro level, our long term goal is to reduce the incidence of preventable maternal and newborn deaths.

Our team has 90 years of combined experience across innovation and women's health across five continents. Our medical advisors are affiliated with the Royal College of Obstetrics & Gyneacology in the UK.

Our team is well-positioned because we understand what it means to feel helpless when a child is lost or is fighting for life. When I had my 2nd child, she couldn’t breathe. Thankfully, she survived. In that same week, a friend of mine lost her baby at birth and this shook me to my core. 

Take the case of Hajara who lives in Gomani. Gomani is a village in Abuja. Hajara has no access to a functional clinic, antenatal classes or any health services that can support her pregnancy. Even though this pregnancy is very important to her, she is not equipped with the right health support, to be able to make sure that she can protect herself and have a safe pregnancy and safe delivery and because of this, Hajara already lost her first child and now pregnant with her second, she is worried she might suffer the same fate.

We were motivated to start Agnes because people in low-income communities suffer the most when it comes to health disparities. With an Agnes subscription, a woman is able to access health education in her native language and 24/7 access to a board-certified midwife via teleconsultation.

With Agnes, women are accessing high quality health support and using technology, we have eliminated barriers such as: illiteracy, access to the internet and transportation costs. Our deep understanding of the needs has come from constantly engaging with women we support in-community and remotely and we continue to evolve our solution based on the insights we gain.

The intersectional nature of our work at Agnes Health requires multi-stakeholder engagement and a solid stakeholder engagement strategy. Support with refining our stakeholder strategy and facilitating partnerships would be crucial for our goals, in addition to funding.

We would like to get support with identifying and engaging key stakeholders from Solve.

Our solution is innovation because it leverages technology and artificial intelligence to ensure that every woman - regardless of literacy level, internet access or language - can improve her health literacy, navigate the healthcare system confidently and get instant access to medical care when needed.

As more women become health literate, they could become community champions for health leading to direct impact on their families and the wider community.

Over the next year, we plan to reach at least 5000 pregnant women and provide continue to reduce maternal death by up to 400% in the communities we serve.

By 2026, we plan to reach 200,000 women. We will do this by leveraging partnerships with health providers (public & private) and Community Based Organisations across key countries in order to scale our impact.

• Number of jobs created for women

• Number of women educated

• Number educational health modules delivered

• Number of women who use a medically trained birth attendance

• Number of women who use a clinic or hospital facility for childbirth

• Maternal health survival

• Newborn health survival

• Number of telehealth consultations provided

Our theory of change is that health education that is assimilated empowers women to be prepared for the reality of each stage of pregnancy and to know how to navigate her engagement a health professional.

When she needs to communicate with a health professional, easy access and immediate triage leads to timely medical intervention and improves maternal and newborn health outcomes as a result.

We are using a combination of SMS technology, Voice over IP to deliver health education and guidance via our proprietary API. Our in-house software is used by our midwives to record medical notes and interactions with the women and forms part of the woman's clinical record.

Agnes Health is a gender-inclusive enterprise, our founding team comprises 75% of women, our target customers are women. Gender equity particularly in the healthcare sector is important to me because everyday I see how women are hindered from fully participating in decision making and public discourses pertaining to healthcare even though they are the most affected.

 According to the WHO, although 7 out of 10 healthcare workers globally are women, they are underrepresented in leadership roles. We would like to change this narrative, by giving more women opportunities.

At Agnes Health, we are building an inclusive company by addressing and prioritizing gender from the start.

One of the policies we put in place to help our employees, is the Flexible work arrangements, 90% of the part time staff who work at Agnes Health is remote, thus ensuring that the women of Agnes Health, have the opportunity to be available for their family, while earning a living and so far, the success rate has been astounding.

Our business model is B2B2C and B2C. Our revenue model is a subscription model.

We earn revenue from both B2B and B2C channels. With our planned growth trajectory, we will break even by 2026 once we reach xxx paid customers.

To fund our growth and scale, we will raise investment capital and grants while we continue to sell our Software as a Service subscription to individuals and clinics - public & private.

We have previously received three grants including two from The Mumspring Foundation (Mckinsey-funded) and KPMG.

We have booked over $60,000 in revenue since we launched in 2021.