PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD Information derived by analyzing social network messages has been used by civil and government agencies, as well as researchers and medical professionals, to track and plan actions to contain the spread of contagious diseases like the flu and cholera.
Winners of a contest sponsored by IBM and Novartis have developed new solutions that could soon be harnessed to help manage the growing global problem of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as asthma, diabetes, stroke and cancer.
The global competition was designed to bring together industry and academia to create innovative, easy-to-use solutions that fight the human and social burden of NCDs. According to the World Health Organization, nearly two-thirds of all deaths occur due to non-communicable diseases. Over the coming decade, some 388 million people worldwide will die of one or more chronic illnesses. The cumulative losses in global economic output due to NCDs will total $47 trillion by 2030.
Experts believe that modest investments to prevent and treat NCDs could save tens of millions of lives and bring major economic returns. The IBM and Novartis contest, called the NCD University Challenge, sought to address unmet patient needs related to chronic NCDs through smart, innovative healthcare delivery models.
"The NCD Challenge illustrates the type of ingenuity, motivation and accessibility that will help control the growing epidemic of NCDs in many parts of the world," said Katherine Holland, general manager, global life sciences, IBM. "Innovation such as this is key to a global strategy to improve care and build a more sustainable healthcare system."
Winners of the competition, announced Friday, were the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, and the ESADE Business School-Universidad Ramon Llull in Barcelona, Spain. The universities won, respectively, in the categories of solutions for developing nations and developed nations.
The Haas School of Business winning entry called 2Vidas is a pharmacy-based membership program for low- to middle-income pregnant women to address the growing problem of diabetes in Mexico. The program works by providing pregnant women access to monitoring tools at local pharmacies, support through peer-led sessions, and encouragement via positive SMS messaging that rewards self-management and offers health tips.
The potential economic impact is the ability to save women 58 to 98 percent of out-of-pocket monitoring costs, depending on frequency of use, and the health system an average of $110 per enrolled woman per year through improved diabetes control. The 2Vidas membership program will deliver estimated $10.4 million in systemic cost savings and $475,000 in added value creation over five years.
The ESADE Business School-Universidad Ramon Llull winning solution is called Dr. Diabetes. The program uses a handheld device with an application and two cloud servers. It is a total solution designed to provide diabetes awareness, monitoring and management to patients with chronic illness, initially for China. It also provides early awareness to the public and streamlines diabetes management for patients. The solution provides medical data via cloud computing to physicians for accurate diagnosis, and to pharmaceutical companies and hospitals for efficient research and development. The solution is designed to be scalable to support other NCDs. Dr. Diabetes is designed to lower the risk of complications, decrease treatment costs to patients by up to 73 percent, and decrease their hospital visits by 65 percent.
Runners up in the completion include Smart Strip submitted by theSaid Business School, University of Oxford. Smart Strip is a non-invasive, mobile blood glucometer band that measures blood glucose transdermally. And Oxford Asthma submitted by theSaid Business School, University of Oxford.Oxford Asthma is aLow-cost solution for large scale monitoring and diagnosis of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Other finalists in the competition include:
> Move4Health submitted by Karolinska Institutet: Prescription for physical activity by physicians, targeted for Vietnam, supported by mobile technology to measure activity and provide healthcare follow up.
> My Health Portal submitted byESADE Business School-Universidad Ramon Llul: Secure online portal based on cloud computing technology that bridges the communication gap between patient and doctor.
> TeleHealth submitted by theUniversity of Melbourne: An innovative integrated telehealth solution that can globally individualize the care and management of people with diabetes.
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