MIT Solve

Solution overview

Our Solution

SonoCare Healthcare

Tagline

Addressing maternal mortality through equitable and technology-driven life-saving pregnancy care intervention for disadvantaged rural women

Pitch us on your solution

830 women die daily from preventable complications in pregnancy and child birth around the world and 99% of these deaths occur in rural communities because of poverty, inaccessibility to pregnancy care services and inequities in healthcare delivery. Without interventions like SonoCare, rural women stand the risk of losing pregnancies and their lives as they lack access to critical diagnostic care services that would help detect complications.
SonoCare is solving this problem by making pregnancy care services accessible and affordable to disadvantaged women in rural communities using simple technology and portable equipment to deliver vital pregnancy care in one click, anytime, anywhere

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What is the problem you are solving?

830 women die daily from preventable complications in pregnancy and childbirth and of these deaths and 99% of these deaths occur in developing countries. For the majority of the population, access to diagnostic pregnancy care services are insufficient or grossly unavailable. Women lack access to diagnostic care services that are conveniently accessible and affordable for them which is why majority of the middle and low-income women never know they have high risk pregnancies until they get to labor when it probably becomes too late. This happens because the healthcare system is grossly under-equipped to offer critically important diagnostic imaging care services for women and available alternative solutions are located in distant urban cities which are inaccessible and very expensive. Their healthcare providers refer them to external office-based solutions providers who are often located in urban cities and difficult to reach, requiring women to travel long distances and leading to marginal expenses and significant inconvenience. This can be fatal in the case of the critically ill and in emergencies. These external solutions providers are often expensive, so women are unable to afford their services and never get to know their pregnancy situations.

Who are you serving?

SonoCare targets women of reproductive ages. In Nigeria, an estimated 27.2 percent of women aged 15-19 years have begun childbearing, of which 20.9 percent have had their first child and 6.3 percent are pregnant with their first child. Also, 32 percent of teenagers in rural areas have begun childbearing, as opposed to 10 percent in the urban areas of Nigeria. During our earlier pilots, we found that many women of reproductive ages mostly get to know of their pregnancy statuses by accident or in later stages of pregnancy when their pregnancies would have become visible. In one of our pilots, of 115 women screen, 23 were between 11 weeks to 3 months pregnant without knowing it. This makes room for serious complications to arise

What is your solution?

SonoCare is addressing this problem through a last-mile diagnostic care interventions such as ultrasound sonograms, gestational malaria, gestational hypertension, gestational diabetes and HIV screenings for disadvantaged women groups in rural communities across Nigeria through a framework that uses portable equipment and vehicles to deliver the services where needed and also a mobile application for ease of access, data storage and transmission; video tele-consultations and support; connecting pregnant women with the nearest local skilled birth attendants as well as interdisciplinary collaborations. SonoCare’s portability allows for delivery of vital diagnostic care services to the otherwise unreachable women in rural communities and transmits the results and findings through the mobile application to be accessible. At-risk pregnancies detected are transferred onward for specialist care and management by our doctors at our clinic or the nearest partner hospital and our diagnostic findings are transmitted on the mobile applications for doctors to access. Local birth attendants can also get help in complex emergencies through our in-app video tele-consultation services as they can get video-based support and advise for handling complexities and emergencies. The mobile app also connects patients with the nearest local birth attendants in urgencies. As SonoCare’s mobile application stores and transmits patients’ diagnostic records in real-time, doctors can access patient’s records in a click and make quicker and better medical decisions saving more and more lives. With most women ignorant of their pregnancy risk statuses, SonoCare’s intervention is saving lives by helping detect life-threatening pregnancy complications for disadvantaged women groups.

Select only the most relevant.

Support communities in designing and determining solutions around critical services
Create or advance equitable and inclusive economic growth

Where is your solution team headquartered?

Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Our solution's stage of development:

Pilot

More about your solution

Select one of the below:

New business model or process

Describe what makes your solution innovative.

The innovative aspects of SonoCare include:

i. Comprehensive screening: in addition to sonograms, we also do other related disease including gestational hypertension, malaria and HIV, and diabetes

ii. Effective follow-up care: while most services screen for complications, we also focus on following up with each patient to ensure they can have optimal outcomes

iii. Leverage mobile technology that works in rural as well as urban settings

iv. Easy to use, portable, and quick to train for scale-up

v. Established network of partners for streamlined referrals and follow-up

vi. Cheaper, Cost-effective services

Vii. On-site service delivery

Describe the core technology that your solution utilizes.

SonoCare is developing a mobile application for ease of access, data storage and transmission; video and text based electronic consultations and support; connecting pregnant women with the nearest local skilled birth attendants as well as interdisciplinary collaborations. SonoCare Healthcare’s mobile applications makes for easier requesting or scheduling of screening appointments and our mobile stations' portability allows for delivery of vital diagnostic care services to the otherwise unreachable women in rural communities and transmits the results and findings through the mobile application to be accessible round-the-clock to both patients and healthcare providers alike to aid faster medical decisions that would save more and more lives

Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:

Internet of Things
Social Networks

Why do you expect your solution to address the problem?

The main reasons maternal mortality continue to persist is because of the unavailability of preventive interventions as well as poverty leading to inequitable distribution of available preventive interventions. Most women never get to know they have high risk pregnancies because services are not available and where available they are often too expensive for the average rural woman to afford. SonoCare Healthcare fills this gap by making life-saving interventions available, affordable and easily accessible for the average rural woman, anytime anywhere.

Select the key characteristics of the population your solution serves.

Women & Girls
Pregnant Women
Rural Residents
Very Poor/Poor
Low-Income
Minorities/Previously Excluded Populations

In which countries do you currently operate?

Nigeria

In which countries will you be operating within the next year?

Nigeria

How many people are you currently serving with your solution? How many will you be serving in one year? How about in five years?

to date, SonoCare Healthcare has served 33,129(3,072 for 2019 only) women/pregnancies. In one year from now, SonoCare Healthcare plans to deploy 10 mobile stations serving a total of 52,000 women/pregnancies. In the next 5 years, SonoCare Healthcare hopes to deploy 100 mobile stations that would serve a 2,596,000 women/pregnancies

What are your goals within the next year and within the next five years?

In the next one year, SonoCare Healthcare plans to achieve transformational impact by deploying 10 mobile field in 50 new rural communities across Nigeria. Over the next 5 years, SonoCare Healthcare plans to deploy 100 mobile stations across the sub-Saharan Africa so as to impact more lives affected by the problem of maternal mortality

What are the barriers that currently exist for you to accomplish your goals for the next year and for the next five years?

The major barriers in achieving our goals at SonoCare Healthcare are:

i. Access to financing

ii. Paucity of qualified professionals and other relevant manpower

iii. Expensive technology

iv. Access to vital networks

How are you planning to overcome these barriers?

SonoCare Healthcare is addressing these challenges by:

i. Seeking impact investment opportunities and increasing sales and revenue efforts

ii. Recruiting and training available pool of qualified doctors and technologists

iii. Seeking strategic technology partnerships

Joining or participating in networking events and opportunities

If your solution has a website, provide a link here:

http://www.sonocare.com.ng

If you have additional video, provide a YouTube or Vimeo link to your video here:

About your team

Your business model & funding

Partnership potential

Why are you applying to Solve?

We are applying to Solve because we want to take advantage of the opportunity to gain access to vital networks of investors and partners as well as gaining mentorship, access to funding opportunities and other vital resources that will help us in our efforts at growing SonoCare Healthcare.

What types of connections and partnerships would be most catalytic for your solution?

Business model
Technology
Funding and revenue model
Talent or board members
Monitoring and evaluation

If you selected Other, please explain here.

Not applicable

With what organizations would you like to partner, and how would you like to partner with them?

We hope to partner with organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the African Women's Development Fund, the Global Fund for Women, the TY Danjuma Foundation, CARE, EngenderHealth, Management Sciences for Health, Heal Africa etc to help fund free delivery of SonoCare Healthcare's solutions for indigent rural women who are the most affected by maternal mortality especially in Nigeria and the wider Sub-Sahara Africa.

If you would like to apply for the AI Innovations Prize, describe how you and your team will utilize the prize to advance your solution. If you are not already using AI in your solution, explain why it is necessary for your solution to be successful and how you plan to incorporate it.

Not applicable

If you would like to apply for the GM Prize on Community-Driven Innovation, describe how you and your team will utilize the prize to advance your solution.

Not applicable

If you would like to apply for the Innovation for Women Prize, describe how you and your team will utilize the prize to advance your solution.

SonoCare Healthcare will utilize this prize towards the deployment of more mobile stations and services in yet unreached rural communities so we can deliver the interventions free of charge to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged women who are in need of the interventions to help detect preventable pregnancy complications, save more lives, improve pregnancy outcomes, save costs and improve pregnancy care services delivery for women in rural communities. To achieve this, SonoCare Healthcare will use the proceeds of this prize to fund the deployment of our technology, procurement of diagnostic equipment for up to 3 new mobile stations; recruitment of new professional personnel and funding overhead and operational costs so we can deliver our interventions to up to 50,000 rural women over 12 months and help the women save upto $1.3 million in costs that could prevent them seeking and getting help as well as giving them a chance to better pregnancy outcomes while reducing the incidence of maternal mortality.

If you would like to apply for the Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion, describe how you and your team will utilize the prize to advance your solution.

Not applicable

If you would like to apply for the Innospark Ventures Prize, describe how you and your team will utilize the prize to advance your solution. If your solution utilizes data, describe how you will ensure that the data is sourced, maintained, and used ethically and responsibly.

Not applicable

If you would like to apply for the Morgridge Family Foundation Community-Driven Innovation Prize, describe how you and your team will utilize the prize to advance your solution.

Not applicable

If you would like to apply for the Everytown for Gun Safety Prize, describe how you and your team will utilize the prize to advance your solution. If your solution utilizes data, describe how you will ensure that the data is sourced, maintained, and used ethically and responsibly.

Not Applicable