Design for Health

Leveraging design for health solutions

“Despite the plethora of interventions and investments that have been made in the healthcare systems across the African continent, health systems are still characterized by a myriad of issues that cut across institutional, human resources, financial, technical and political developments which make them too weak to deliver effective healthcare services for better outcomes. 
Our Why is to cultivate a culture of innovation in the health ecosystem by improving health outcomes and well-being through the application of human-centered design principles to healthcare systems, products, and services. We believe that by understanding the needs and experiences of patients, healthcare providers, and communities, we can create solutions that are effective, user-friendly, and sustainable.”

Stephanie Okpere Practice Lead - Design for Health

Why we believe this is important

Our Thinking

Health Tech Innovation: We play a key role in Africa's health tech innovation ecosystem by encouraging collaborations via our Community of Practice through which we conduct research and provide bespoke capacity-building, mentorship programs and events. We support the growth and scalability of health tech startups in Africa through our incubation & acceleration programs, advisory services, thought leadership, and facilitating investments are seeking the possibility of spurring innovation in public health and empowering key players in the space to intentionally innovate in order to address some of the challenges seen across the continent.

HCD Service: Utilizing a human-centered design (HCD) approach, we strive to empower our stakeholders and forge global partnerships. We aim to explore the application technology to tackle Africa’s public health challenges, ensuring solutions are tailored to the needs of users for maximum impact and effectiveness. Our human-centered design (HCD) projects span across diverse areas of public health, including Maternal and Child Health, Epidemiology, Health Information Management Systems, Immunization, and Emerging Public Health Priorities.

Research: Our research methodologies are comprehensive, incorporating exploratory, analytical, quantitative, and qualitative approaches across innovation, scientific/implementation research, and public health domains. With a keen interest and dedicated focus, we actively strive to contribute to strengthening future pandemic preparedness within the public health sector on the continent.

What we have done

Past Projects

We recognise the importance of evidence-based research in fostering a robust research culture within the healthcare ecosystem. Through our exploration of diverse research techniques, we aim to identify gaps and challenges within the healthcare landscape, conduct insightful analyses, and offer recommendations to enhance healthcare systems across the continent. See some of our expressions below:

Smiles for Mothers (Funded by MSD)

This consortium project focused on reducing maternal mortality and morbidity caused by postpartum hemorrhage (PPH). By employing human-centered design principles, we gained insights into the root causes of these challenges, leading to the design and implementation of prototypes aimed at reducing PPH-related deaths by 20% across three states in Nigeria: Kano, Lagos, and Niger.

The Governance Innovation Lifecycle Challenge and Accelerator

A consortium-based project designed and supported by MIT GOV/LAB, Gatefield, and CcHUB. The governance innovation lifecycle challenge and accelerator addressed problems that made it difficult to incentivize and support sustainable governance innovations. At the core, the project focused on governance innovations targeted at improving service delivery in the Healthcare sector as well as promoting new patterns of responsibility in the healthcare system. The project leveraged a specially designed human-centered design framework to implement an approach to address critical areas of need in healthcare service delivery, enhance government responsiveness, and encourage changes in individual and collective behavior that can ensure better health outcomes for the populace.

Africa Digital Epidiemology Innovation Network (ADEIN)

The Africa Digital Epidemiology Innovation Network is a platform established to promote the development of Africa’s capacity/capabilities in the field of digital epidemiology by leveraging the experience and expertise of its members. It is a community of health practitioners, scientists, researchers, data analysts, and developers engaged in exploring the effective use of data and technology in the monitoring and surveillance of diseases in the continent.

COVID-19 Practice Management System

Developed in collaboration with NIMR, this system supports COVID-19 testing in Nigeria, facilitating case identification, reporting, triaging, and communication of test results.

Design for Epidemiology (Funded by Facebook now Meta)

The Design for Epidemiology Designathon, a collaboration between Co-Creation Hub and Facebook, aimed to support tech-enabled health startups (in Ideation or MVP stages) in Nigeria to develop innovative solutions for disease prevention, leveraging Facebook’s Data for Good. Held over three days in mid-October 2021, the event selected 12 teams from numerous applications to explore and utilize Facebook’s datasets for disease monitoring and control. Through workshops on Human-Centered Design and Facebook’s Data for Good, teams developed and pitched their solutions to a panel of judges, including representatives from Facebook, NCDC, eHealth Africa, and CcHUB. Two winning teams in the IDEA and MVP categories received $10,000 and $15,000 respectively. These teams, including D-Tracker Ltd, Myclinic Ng Ltd, Healthstack Solutions, and 9th digit Contracting Ltd, proceeded to a three-month pilot program to refine their prototypes and business models through iterative testing.

User-Centered Drug Distribution Value Chain (Funded by BMGF)

The drug supply system in Africa is notably fragmented, with poor data sharing being a key contributing factor to its weaknesses. This project addressed this issue by focusing on triangulating data among drug providers/aggregator platforms, public sector management systems, patients, and consumers in three African countries: Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. The goal was to improve the capacity of drug providers to deliver better frontline services to healthcare users by facilitating more efficient data exchange and collaboration across the supply chain.
With the assistance of our partners, our team successfully gathered information on the current drug value chain and co-created prototypes tailored to the specific context. These prototypes aim to enhance data sharing and visibility among key stakeholders throughout the drug value chain, thereby facilitating more accurate health reporting. These initiatives represent a step forward in improving healthcare systems and outcomes.

PayMed: Integrates a payment system, providing a trackable order number (via Mpesa) while also offering store credit.

PharmaDex: An API solution that seamlessly integrates into existing institutional systems. It displays information on accessed medication and facilitates the evaluation of available medication stocks via a centralized database.

Our Clients and Partners