Alliance Members Lead Conversations at Devex’s Prescription for Progress 2022
Alliance member experts from Zenysis Technologies, PATH, Equalize Health, and Population Services International were featured in a series of virtual conversations at Devex's annual Prescription for Progress event on February 15. The speakers discussed how technology, innovation and cross-sectoral partnerships can advance global health. Links to the recorded sessions and key quotes are below.
Devex Session: Taking Digital Health Solutions to Scale in LMICs
Featuring Safa Naraghi, Vice President of Delivery at Alliance member Zenysis.
“We’ve dedicated on-the-ground staff to user engagement, which means that we are consistently listening to and appreciating our users’ needs and wants. By creating a strong connection between our user engagement teams and our engineering teams, we’ve created innovation flows in both directions. This iterative and two-way approach helps the platform be more accessible, more useful, and really scalable for the people who drive health outcomes.” – Safa Naraghi, Zenysis
“We believe that talented engineers can do a lot to make the world a better place, but we are also different from that ecosystem in that we actually don’t believe that technology is enough. Without trust, we believe you really can’t get anything done, no matter how good your technology is.” – Safa Naraghi, Zenysis
Devex Session: Working Across Silos to Advance Progress on Other Health Priorities amid COVID-19
Featuring Alliance board Co-vice Chair Neha Agarwal, Senior Commercialization Officer for Diagnostics, PATH, as the firestarter (25:10 in the video).
“Dr. Admasu said it really well. Covid has really allowed us to learn the impact of good leadership and genuine collaboration and I think we do need to incorporate that moving forward. The Bay Area Global Health Alliance is one great way to catalyze multi-sectoral partnerships in the Bay Area and beyond.” – Neha Agarwal, PATH
Devex Session: Taking Global Health Solutions From Discovery to Development to Delivery
Featuring Krista Donaldson, CEO of Alliance member Equalize Health.
“Design itself needs to evolve in global health. We’ve been very focused on users, which is great, but we also need to think about life-centered design. Thinking about planetary health and some of the other impacts, especially as we know climate change’s impact, particularly on women and children.” – Krista Donaldson, Equalize Health
“Organizations, whether they’re USAID or Equalize Health, need to be able to reckon with where we think the future is going. The pandemic was predictable, although in many cases we treat it like it was a wild card moment. Futurists say that if you think about the future, you can actually shape it because you are more prepared for it.” – Krista Donaldson, Equalize Health
Devex Session: Digital health tools — Access, Scale, and Trust.
Featuring Martin Dale, Director for Digital Health and Monitoring at Alliance member Population Services International.
“Strategic partnerships is an important aspect of how PSI delivers its work. We’ve got internal digital health capacity, we’ve got a huge technical team internally, but we believe and we’re committed to partnerships as the way to really power up our efforts in the settings where we work.” – Martin Dale, Population Services International
“Right now, we are focused on scaling consumer-powered healthcare. This is all about placing more control in the hands of consumers to better manage their health journey.” – Martin Dale, Population Services International
At a Devex Pro digital event on February 23, Senior Reporter Catherine Cheney was joined by Nisha Deolalikar, health partner programs lead at Meta; Rakesh Bharania, director of humanitarian impact data at Salesforce.org; and Andrew Pattison, team lead of digital channels for the World Health Organization’s department of digital health and innovation, to discuss how global development organizations can more effectively partner with tech companies.
“‘This is a problem definition. This is what WHO wants to solve. How do we solve it?’ And encourage the tech companies to come with a solution definition.” — Andrew Pattison, Team Lead of Digital Channels, World Health Organization’s Department of Digital Health and Innovation.
Alliance members can reach out to communications@bayareaglobalhealth.org for more information about this event.