Maternova

SUMMARY: Through an open, interactive innovation platform the maternal/newborn health field can made more efficient and effective. An open, collaborative, fast-paced community and marketplace of tools and ideas is being designed to track, create and deliver life-saving tools and ideas to frontline midwives and nurses saving the lives of mothers in the lowest-resource settings.

PROBLEM SPACE: In many countries, women of reproductive age face are at greater risk of dying during childbirth than from any other cause. One woman dies every minute….in the context trying to give life. Simple life-saving tools exist but are not reaching health workers. This needs to change radically and immediately.

SOLUTION: We have built a ‘go to’ site on connections, technologies, techniques and ideas for delivering high quality global maternal/newborn health. It is a preferred state model because it is open, multi-disciplinary and reliant upon rapid feedback and constant redesign. While aid agencies have often created layers of bureaucracy and red tape between donors and the end recipients of aid, we remove the middlemen. Our goal is to focus on solutions that can save lives, and to spread information on effectiveness, availability and price as quickly as possible. We get feedback directly from frontline providers.

Our Innovation Index for the first time put dozens of low-tech innovations together on the same accessible Index. We believe that medicine, transport, light, power, design and public health are part of the equation for maternal survival. We cover products currently on the market as well as those still in research and development.

We don’t just track tools and ideas, we package them, sell them and distribute the tools. Where a tool doesn’t exist, like an inexpensive way to measure postpartum blood loss, we step in and rapidly design a new tool. We also iterate and create prototypes rapidly and as part of an ongoing process seeking constant improvement and feedback from the field.

We work on specific tools, but we also cover unique approaches to health systems. With our obstetric kit we are creating a suitcase stuffer to be taken in the bags of the tens of thousands of aid workers who visit clinics each year. We use software to create simple maps of networks of clinics. We cross disciplines covering design, science, technology, humanitarian aid, logistics, anthropology and more.

Our strategy is open, scalable and sustainable. We are creating an open global marketplace, but doing so within the legal structure of a mission-driven for-profit company.

UPDATE: Since BFI, Maternova has tested several iterations of its core offering– infromation on maternal and newborn health innovation and direct access to proven technologies. We have found that our partners and customers are interested in access to a wide range of technologies including rapid tests for diseases like cholera, Zika, Chikungunya, malaria, dengue and HIV. In addition, obstetric first aid products are in high demnd as are novel life-saving newborn resuscitation and warming products.

We have been able to build out the first ecommerce platform in the global health space, reaching 180 countries with our messaging and selling into more than 50 countries.

CONTACT PERSON: [email protected]