ColaLife is a charity that developed an innovative treatment kit called Kit Yamoyo to improve access to oral rehydration solution (ORS) and zinc for treating childhood diarrhea. Through user research and trials in Zambia, they found that Kit Yamoyo, which included easier to use packaging and dosing, led to much higher treatment rates compared to conventional large ORS sachets. The trials showed Kit Yamoyo improved correct use of ORS, availability, and treatment rates. ColaLife then partnered with local manufacturers to produce Kit Yamoyo at scale for widespread distribution, resulting in hundreds of thousands of sales. Key lessons included focusing on user needs, testing innovations, and partnering with local groups to
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The role of innovation in augmenting healthcare - the ColaLife Story
1. The role of innovation in augmenting Healthcare â the ColaLife Story
Simon Berry Co-founder & CEO, ColaLife simon@colalife.org
2. What is ColaLife?
ColaLife is a charity registered in the UK
Charity number: 1142516
â Two full-time workers and one part-time
â Six voluntary trustees on our board
â Focus on saving childrenâs lives
â Independent
â Our fieldwork was carried out in Zambia but we are now working to have a global impact
We have no commercial interest in the products described in this presentation
4. What do we mean by innovation?
Innovation is:
Something new or different that delivers value to the world,
with the key criteria that youâre not innovating if youâre not
improving peopleâs lives.
So:
it is not about technology (but it might be).
it is more than just a clever idea.
13. Diarrhoea
8%of deaths
Malaria
5%of deaths
AIDS
1%
Source: UNICEF (2017) Levels and trends in child mortality. Estimates developed by the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.
Measles
1%
The second biggest infectious killer is diarrhoea.
24. Kit Yamoyo brand, design & benefits.
Kit Yamoyo
⢠Attractive
⢠ORS sachets
are 200ml
⢠Packaging is also:
â A measuring device
for the water
25. Kit Yamoyo brand, design & benefits.
Kit Yamoyo
⢠Attractive
⢠ORS sachets
are 200ml
⢠Packaging is also:
â A measuring device
for the water
â A mixing device
26. Kit Yamoyo brand, design & benefits.
Kit Yamoyo
⢠Attractive
⢠ORS sachets
are 200ml
⢠Packaging is also:
â A measuring device
for the water
â A mixing device
â A storage device
(the soap tray is a lid)
â A cup
28. Everything we do must be self-sustainingâŚ
We cannot become a permanent part of the solution
Everything is done through local organisations/processes
We therefore work through partnerships
These must be *smart* partnerships
Our approach.
32. 60%
Only 60% of carers
mixed ORS correctly
when given
conventional litre
sachets.
0
Suppliers sold ORS or
Zinc in the private
sector.
<1%
of children received
the correct
treatment for
diarrhoea â ORS &
Zinc
7.3km
Average distance to
ORS at clinics (1 L
sachet only, no Zinc).
September 2012
Before Kit Yamoyo. Rural, remote
areas.
Before
Trial results.
33. 60%
Only 60% of carers
mixed ORS correctly
when given
conventional litre
sachets.
0
Suppliers sold ORS or
Zinc in the private
sector.
<1%
of children received
the correct
treatment for
diarrhoea â ORS &
Zinc
7.3km
Average distance to
ORS at clinics (1 L
sachet only, no Zinc).
August 2013
After 12 monthsâ trial of new Kit
Yamoyo design & distribution
through existing private sector
channels.
September 2012
Before Kit Yamoyo. Rural, remote
areas.
Before
After
Trial results.
34. 60%
Only 60% of carers
mixed ORS correctly
when given
conventional litre
sachets.
0
Suppliers sold ORS or
Zinc in the private
sector.
<1%
of children received
the correct
treatment for
diarrhoea â ORS &
Zinc
7.3km
Average distance to
ORS at clinics (1 L
sachet only, no Zinc).
>26k
Kit Yamoyos sold into
2 remote rural areas
in 1 year via existing
market channels.
August 2013
After 12 monthsâ trial of new Kit
Yamoyo design & distribution
through existing private sector
channels.
September 2012
Before Kit Yamoyo. Rural, remote
areas.
Before
After
Trial results.
35. 60%
Only 60% of carers
mixed ORS correctly
when given
conventional litre
sachets.
0
Suppliers sold ORS or
Zinc in the private
sector.
<1%
of children received
the correct
treatment for
diarrhoea â ORS &
Zinc
7.3km
Average distance to
ORS at clinics (1 L
sachet only, no Zinc).
>26k
Kit Yamoyos sold into
2 remote rural areas
in 1 year via existing
market channels.
45%
of children in trial
areas received
ORS/Zinc. Up from a
baseline of <1%.
August 2013
After 12 monthsâ trial of new Kit
Yamoyo design & distribution
through existing private sector
channels.
September 2012
Before Kit Yamoyo. Rural, remote
areas.
Before
After
Trial results.
36. 60%
Only 60% of carers
mixed ORS correctly
when given
conventional litre
sachets.
0
Suppliers sold ORS or
Zinc in the private
sector.
<1%
of children received
the correct
treatment for
diarrhoea â ORS &
Zinc
7.3km
Average distance to
ORS at clinics (1 L
sachet only, no Zinc).
>26k
Kit Yamoyos sold into
2 remote rural areas
in 1 year via existing
market channels.
45%
of children in trial
areas received
ORS/Zinc. Up from a
baseline of <1%.
2.4km
Distance to ORS/Zinc
in the trial areas was
reduced by two-
thirds from 7.3km to
2.4km.
August 2013
After 12 monthsâ trial of new Kit
Yamoyo design & distribution
through existing private sector
channels.
September 2012
Before Kit Yamoyo. Rural, remote
areas.
Before
After
Trial results.
37. 60%
Only 60% of carers
mixed ORS correctly
when given
conventional litre
sachets.
0
Suppliers sold ORS or
Zinc in the private
sector.
<1%
of children received
the correct
treatment for
diarrhoea â ORS &
Zinc
7.3km
Average distance to
ORS at clinics (1 L
sachet only, no Zinc).
>26k
Kit Yamoyos sold into
2 remote rural areas
in 1 year via existing
market channels.
45%
of children in trial
areas received
ORS/Zinc. Up from a
baseline of <1%.
2.4km
Distance to ORS/Zinc
in the trial areas was
reduced by two-
thirds from 7.3km to
2.4km.
93%
of Kit Yamoyo users
mixed ORS correctly,
due to appropriate
200ml sachets and
the kitâs measuring
function.
August 2013
After 12 monthsâ trial of new Kit
Yamoyo design & distribution
through existing private sector
channels.
September 2012
Before Kit Yamoyo. Rural, remote
areas.
Before
After
Trial results.
44. ORS
Reduce number of
sachets to 4
This may also
enhance adherence
to the combined
therapy
Zinc
Produce locally
Design the blister
pack to enhance
adherence to the 10-
day regime
Blister pack needs
no box
Soap
Produce locally
Leaflet
Simplify â
single fold.
Same leaflet
for all formats
Packaging
Remove constraint
of fitting in Coca-
Cola crate
Produce locally
Produce re-fill option
Incorporating the learning into the scale-up.
60. Foster innovation
Move to the mainstream
Fail fast, learn and move on
Focus on want not need
Itâs not just what you do, itâs the way that you do it
Key Lessons.
Have a clear vision
Hello everyone. Thank you very much for inviting me. It is a great honour to be here.
Iâve been asked to talk about the role of innovation in improving healthcare and what we must do to ensure innovations have an impact.
To do this I will be drawing heavily on ColaLifeâs experience in improving access to co-packaged ORS and Zinc for the treatment of diarrhoea in Zambia.
I will be highlighting the lessons we have learnt that I think will be helpful for anyone innovating in the healthcare sector.
Let me start by telling what ColaLife is.
ColaLife is a charity registered in the UK
Charity number: 1142516
Two full-time workers and one part-time
Six voluntary trustees
Focus on saving childrenâs lives
Independent
Our fieldwork was carried out in Zambia but we are now working to have a global impact
We have no commercial interest in the products described in this presentation
This is the team.
Jane works with me full-time. She is my partner in life and ColaLife.
Rohit is based in Canada and works with us part-time. He is our public health adviser and monitoring and evaluation expert.
So what is innovation?
If you ask 10 innovation experts what they mean by innovation you are likely to get 10 different definitions.
This is the definition I work to. Innovation is something new or different that delivers value to the world, with the key criteria that youâre not innovating if youâre not improving peopleâs lives.
So innovation is not about technology. Just because you are using a mobile phone to do something doesnât in itself make what you are doing innovative. You need to be improving peopleâs lives.
Similarly, an idea may be innovative but it is not innovation until it is put into practice and improves people's lives.
So why do we need innovation? Why is it important?
Let me use under 5 child mortality as an example.
In the UK we have a low child mortality rate and it is also decliningâŚ
and if we project into the future, by 2050 child mortality rates will be very small indeed.
Mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa are a lot higher but are also declining.
But you will note the massive inequality.
If we project this decline into the future you can see that child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa will still be many times higher than in the UK right now. It will probably take at least 100 years for comparable survival rates to be achieved.
But that assumes âBusiness as Usualâ or carrying on doing things we are doing now.
However, innovation is by definition NOT âbusiness as usualâ.
Innovation can cause a step-change in the progress made.
This is why we need innovation â particularly in the health sector â so that we can remove the inequalities in health that exist across the world today.
We need innovation in the healthcare sector because âBusiness as usualâ is not enough to stop growing health inequalities.
Letâs bring this innovation theory to life by looking at innovation in practice.
In 2008, ColaLife started to try and help solve the problem of high child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa.
Child mortality is unacceptably high in developing countries. 1 in 13 children donât make it to their 5th birthday.
Just as shocking as this level of mortality is the fact that diarrhoea, an easily treated condition, is the second biggest killer.
Dehydration from diarrhoea kills more children as Malaria, HIV/AIDS and Measles combined.
Although diarrhoea is easily treatable with very simple medicines people donât have easy access to them.
But it is not just about mortality.
In sub-Saharan Africa 40% of children are stunted which means they are smaller than they should be for their age. Diarrhoea is a key factor in stunting.
If a child is stunted at the age of 2 there will be permanent effects on both physical and mental development. They will never reach their full potential.
But we have known how to treat diarrhoea for more than 3 decades and the latest global recommendation â ORS with Zinc - is 15 years old.
Both are cheap to produce and stable at ambient temperatures.
The trouble is only 7% of children get this treatment.
If all children with diarrhoea received zinc and ORS promptly, over 90% of these deaths could be prevented.
So diarrhoea mortality is a problem of ACCESS to the known, effective treatment.
This brings me to the ideaâŚ
Coke gets everywhere.
But whilst you can buy Coke, and many other commodities, in the remotest parts of the world, you cannot get ORS and Zinc to treat a child with diarrhoea.
While small community shops are well stocked with the things people want, the public sector struggles to keep public health centres stocked with essential medicines like ORS and Zinc.
The last remaining barrier to children getting the treatment we know works, and saves their lives, is ACCESS.
And so our idea was born. Why donât we put diarrhoea treatment kits in Coca-Cola crates?
The logic was simple: Coke gets everywhere. So, if we put diarrhoea kits in the same crates, they would get there too
The process of designing the anti-diarrhoea kit started here. We spoke to eight groups of caregivers about the challenges they faced treating diarrhoea in the home and we learnt so much.
Firstly, litre sachets of ORS are too big for use in the home.
ORS comes as a powder that needs to be mixed with safe water. Once mixed up it should be used as soon as possible and any solution still left after 24 hours needs to be thrown away as it gets contaminated. But a child will only drink about 400ml in 24 hours. So if you follow the instructions correctly you will throw away more ORS than you give to your child.
Litre sachets of ORS were never designed for the home treatment of diarrhoea. They were designed for use in institutions â hospitals and clinics.. If you have five children lined up with diarrhoea it makes sense to make up ORS by the litre. The situation in the home where you are treating just one child is completely different and a litre is too much to mix up at one time.
Measuring water is also a problem, in our trial only 60% of caregivers got this right. Caregivers resource-poor settings rarely have a litre measure and most will not know what a litre is.
==
These focus groups also gave us an indication of what caregivers would be prepared to pay for a diarrhoea treatment kit and the caregivers gave us their views on various naming and branding options.
Kit Yamoyo
Attractive
ORS sachetsare 200ml
Packaging is also:
A measuring devicefor the water
Packaging is also:
A measuring devicefor the water
A mixing device
Packaging is also:
A measuring devicefor the water
A mixing device
A storage device(the soap tray is a lid)
A cup
As well as ORS, the kit contained Zinc supplements and so delivered the 12 year old international standard for diarrhoea treatment: ORS combined with Zinc.
The kit also contained soap to help ensure handwashing.
Before I go on to tell you what we did next, Iâd like to tell you a little bit about the way we do things.
The foundation of our approach is that everything we do must be ultimately self-sustaining and this defines everything else.
It means that ColaLife cannot become a permanent part of the solution.
This in turn means that we have to do everything through local organisations and processes.
So we have to work through partnerships. But partnerships come with a health warning. They cannot be any old partnership they must be âsmartâ partnerships.
In our case, we know that all the organisations that are needed to transform access to affordable diarrhoea treatment already exist in most countries:
The policy makers
The regulators
The manufacturers
The distributors
The wholesalers
The retailers
The doctors, nurses and community health workers
The marketeers
And so on
The task then, is NOT to set up parallel systems to do what these organisations are there to do, but to transform the way they operate together.
We start by establishing what we call a âsmart partnershipâ.
Our role is to bring these players together around a shared vision NOT around ColaLife.
When this job is done then ColaLife can withdraw and leave a sustainable, transformed local system behind.
When we leave, we donât want to leave with a bang, or with whimper. We donât want anyone to notice that weâve gone.
Back to the story.
Once we had designed our anti-diarrhoea kit - called Kit Yamoyo â we tested its distribution through the same channels used by Coca-Cola.
The results were impressive.
From a standing start, in 12 months, more that 26,000 kits were bought by retailers serving these communities. Our baseline showed that ORS or Zinc was not available through the private sector before we started.
Treatment rates with ORS and Zinc rose from virtually zero to 45%.
We reduced caregiversâ need to travel to access ORS by two thirds; from 7.3km to 2.4km because ORS and Zinc was available in community shops which are more numerous and therefore closer to peopleâs homes.
And finally, we increased the accuracy with which caregivers mixed the ORS due to the measuring functionality built into the packaging.
The results were impressive.
From a standing start, in 12 months, more that 26,000 kits were bought by retailers serving these communities. Our baseline showed that ORS or Zinc was not available through the private sector before we started.
Treatment rates with ORS and Zinc rose from virtually zero to 45%.
We reduced caregiversâ need to travel to access ORS by two thirds; from 7.3km to 2.4km because ORS and Zinc was available in community shops which are more numerous and therefore closer to peopleâs homes.
And finally, we increased the accuracy with which caregivers mixed the ORS due to the measuring functionality built into the packaging.
The results were impressive.
From a standing start, in 12 months, more that 26,000 kits were bought by retailers serving these communities. Our baseline showed that ORS or Zinc was not available through the private sector before we started.
Treatment rates with ORS and Zinc rose from virtually zero to 45%.
We reduced caregiversâ need to travel to access ORS by two thirds; from 7.3km to 2.4km because ORS and Zinc was available in community shops which are more numerous and therefore closer to peopleâs homes.
And finally, we increased the accuracy with which caregivers mixed the ORS due to the measuring functionality built into the packaging.
The results were impressive.
From a standing start, in 12 months, more that 26,000 kits were bought by retailers serving these communities. Our baseline showed that ORS or Zinc was not available through the private sector before we started.
Treatment rates with ORS and Zinc rose from virtually zero to 45%.
We reduced caregiversâ need to travel to access ORS by two thirds; from 7.3km to 2.4km because ORS and Zinc was available in community shops which are more numerous and therefore closer to peopleâs homes.
And finally, we increased the accuracy with which caregivers mixed the ORS due to the measuring functionality built into the packaging.
The results were impressive.
From a standing start, in 12 months, more that 26,000 kits were bought by retailers serving these communities. Our baseline showed that ORS or Zinc was not available through the private sector before we started.
Treatment rates with ORS and Zinc rose from virtually zero to 45%.
We reduced caregiversâ need to travel to access ORS by two thirds; from 7.3km to 2.4km because ORS and Zinc was available in community shops which are more numerous and therefore closer to peopleâs homes.
And finally, we increased the accuracy with which caregivers mixed the ORS due to the measuring functionality built into the packaging.
The results were impressive.
From a standing start, in 12 months, more that 26,000 kits were bought by retailers serving these communities. Our baseline showed that ORS or Zinc was not available through the private sector before we started.
Treatment rates with ORS and Zinc rose from virtually zero to 45%.
We reduced caregiversâ need to travel to access ORS by two thirds; from 7.3km to 2.4km because ORS and Zinc was available in community shops which are more numerous and therefore closer to peopleâs homes.
And finally, we increased the accuracy with which caregivers mixed the ORS due to the measuring functionality built into the packaging.
However, our idea of transporting kits in crates did not work.
What we thought was THE innovation was not the innovation at all.
Less than 4% of retailers put the kits in Coca-Cola crates.
In practice, this is what happened. Retailers strapped Kit Yamoyo to the back of their bicycle along with everything else.
It wasnât the space in the crates that was important, it was the space in the market for a diarrhoea treatment kit.
We had designed and marketed an aspirational product (just like Coke) which people wanted and which retailers could make a profit on by bringing it to their communities to sell (just like Coke).
This is why the retailers bought Kit Yamoyo.
They bought it and brought it to their communities for same reason they buy and bring Coca-Cola â because people want it and they can make a profit selling it to them.
And everyone else in the distribution chain responds to this same motivation. This PULLS the product into the remotest of communities.
For these value chains to work you must design a product that people WANT. To understand what they want you need to ask them.
This process is often referred to as Human Centred Design. Generally this is not the way the public health sector works. Most health products and services are designed by experts on the basis of what they think people need. Although this has to be the approach for many drugs, I would argue that patient-centred design processes could be used a lot more in the health sector than is currently the case.
The big prize for designing a health product that people want, is that they are more likely to pay for it and, if they are, you can engage the existing private sector distribution channels to get it to them. You donât have to set up your own distribution systems.
This presented us with a very big problem.
The world had signed up to the idea of the kits in the crates.
And we had won some very prestigious global awards.
Weâd established ourselves as innovators in the eyes of the world but we now had to pivot?
What were we to do?
This is where business guru, Stephen Covey, comes in.
He said that in business âThe main thing is to keep the main thing the main thingâ and thatâs exactly what we did.
We were in the business of saving lives not winning awards.
It was time for our first re-thinkâŚ
At the end of the trial we ploughed all the learning into a re-design of Kit Yamoyo. This was aimed at improving the kit but we also had to drive out all subsidy.
Nothing was exempt from this review. We even redesigned the much acclaimed packaging that fitted between the Coke bottles in a crate.
Nothing was sacred!
The result was two new formats:
the screw-top and the flexi-pack
Both of these maintained as many of the features as possible from the original design.
In particular, the water measuring feature.
We were even able to achieve this with the flexi-pack
With our scale-up design in place, we started marketing this new product in the same ways you would market any fast moving consumer good.
This is the artwork for the billboards used.
You will notice that ColaLifeâs name is not there; we are invisible to the customer as we are not a permanent part of the solution.
This is the production line.
Note that the local manufacturer is producing the product for the market. They are NOT producing it for us (ColaLife). This means that the whole initiative can be self-sustaining in the long term.
So things were going well.
We were well on our way to establishing a commercial diarrhoea treatment kit in the private sector.
Kit Yamoyo was available in 100s of community shops.
And nationwide in supermarkets.
However, a series of events, meant that sales into the private sector remain a modest levels.
Sales even fell after the trial when the donor-funded launch marketing ceased and Zambia has been hit by high inflation over the last two years.
So, although our private sector model is working, sales volumes were not exciting from the manufacturerâs point of view.
Had we stopped here we may have failed.
However, after the trial the Zambian government started showing an interest in distributing a government branded version of the commercial flexi-pack which the manufacturer was able to produce very easily by simply changing the instruction leaflet that also carries the branding.
The government orders transformed the sales for the manufacturer.
And by the end of this year, when current orders have been fulfilled, the graph will look like this with 94% of sales going to the government.
At this point it is interesting to reflect on the changes that have occurred from our original idea.
We started off with the idea of distributing medicines through the unused space in Coca-Cola crates exclusively through the private sector and this is where weâve come to by keeping resolutely focussed on our vision of âsaving lives through better access to ORS and Zinc for the treatment of diarrhoeaâ.
Crucial to this engagement by the government was a policy change and this took the form of the Zambian government adding co-packaged ORS and Zinc to their National Essential Medicines List.
Without doing this the government would not have been able to buy co-packaged ORS and Zinc.
To achieve this listing, we as private sector, product design innovators had to turn our hand to lobbying for policy change. And as I have said before, if we hadnât done this our innovation may have failed.
I want finish off by telling you what we plan to do next to have a global impact.
Once it was clear that things in Zambia were going to be self-sustaining with no further support from ColaLife, we turned our attention to achieving a global impact.
As things stood in 2017, the only way we saw of doing this was to move to another country and repeat the same process that we had gone through in Zambia. A trial was likely to be required, as our approach was seen as an innovation and not part of the mainstream. This would have been a tedious and slow process.
So instead, we decided to apply our limited resources to trying to move our innovation to the mainstream of global child health policy.
In 2017 ColaLife recruited the Diarrhoea Innovations Group to an effort to get co-packaged ORS and Zinc on the WHO Essential Medicines List.
After more than a year of work, our application was submitted to the WHO in Nov-18. In Jul-19 WHO published a revised Essential Medicines List, adding co-packaged ORS and Zinc as the recommended treatment for diarrhoea.
This is a game-changer and moves our work out of the âinnovation boxâ and into the mainstream of global child health.
For most countries, the question is now âhow do we implement the new WHO recommendation?â and not âshould we test this co-packaging idea?â
This will make globalisation much more straightforward and rapid.
I want to finish by making the point that to have real impact innovations need to move to the mainstream â they need to become âthe new way of doing thingsâ.
Thank you,
So here are some key lessons from our work which may be more widely applicable.
Firstly, we must foster innovation because we need the step-change that innovation can deliver to reduce health inequalities.
The incremental improvement in health that we are seeing, particularly in developing countries, is far too slow and the health divide is increasing.
You need to have a clear vision, something to refer back to when things donât go the way you thought they would. Having a clear vision will help you fail fast, learn and move on.
Innovations must be based on what your target group WANT. And to find that out, you must ask them.
This has particular importance in the commercial sector but even in other settings itâs better to strive to deliver what you KNOW PEOPLE WANT rather than delivering WHAT YOU THINK PEOPLE NEED.
To have a big impact, innovations should be self-sustaining. Key to achieving this is working in partnership and building these partnerships around a shared vision, not around you.
And finally, to have a significant impact, you must move your innovation to the mainstream so that it becomes âthe way we do thingsâ.
Thank you.
Â
Thank you very much.
Let me finish with some key lessons from our work which may be more widely applicable.