Our Advisory Board helps us see and think in 360
There were ten of us, crowded in the corridor behind the paediatric ward, craning our necks over and around each other to get a glimpse of Darius Ariyo, the technician at Kisiizi Hospital. It was an unusually intimate atmosphere for a show and tell of an oxygen concentrator. But it really was moving because this medical equipment had not only changed Darius’s life, we knew it had saved 315 babies from death in that hospital.
Not having to worry about oxygen running out when there was a power cut, which happens up to 4 times a day in the dry season, was revolutionary for Kisiizi Hospital; a seven hour drive south from the capital of Uganda, Kampala. If there is a problem with the machine, a remote monitoring system alerts a team in Kampala immediately.
“I remember when these two concentrators broke. I called FREO2 and it took just one day to send the spare parts…so they really are doing a very good job. We really appreciate it.”
— Darius Ariyo, Kisiizi Hospital
Later that day, we visited a neonatal intensive care ward within Kisiizi Hospital, where Sister Eunice spoke about wishing that they had consistent access to oxygen. They did not have anything like the set up that we had visited earlier that day as the hospital lacks the funds to roll out the technology across the whole hospital. Babies born prematurely need access to oxygen to survive and grow, but often there is not enough equipment to go around, leading to necessary and very difficult decisions about which child should have which treatment, when and for how long.
A few months later, our advisory board iterated to us the huge importance of a strong business case if we were to persuade global decision makers to invest in scaling models like we had seen in Kisiizi Hospital.
Adding to the global movement of CoLabbers
Sister Eunice and Darius, along with our advisory board, are key partners (or CoLabbers, as we like to say), guiding us to ensure that the Oxygen CoLab positively supports the important and hard decisions being made around oxygen provision across the world.
As the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) funded Oxygen CoLab, we are striding into our fourth year as a programme. Our work began during COVID-19, when we collaborated with a diverse range of people including policy makers, innovators, engineers, manufacturers and clinicians, to find out how oxygen concentrators might need to be technically improved to be fit for use in low-resource settings. In order to reduce COVID-related deaths as quickly as possible, we worked in an emergent, reactive and collaborative way.
Our work has grown into piloting new oxygen delivery business models that provide round the clock oxygen access for patients when they need it, and supporting manufacturers and product innovators to bring more fit-for-purpose oxygen concentrators to the market. In this fourth year, we’ll be bringing together evidence from across all of these efforts to national and global audiences.
You can find out more about our progress and plans here.
As our work has grown, the continued advice, support and steer from people with a range of experience and perspectives has been key to keeping our efforts focused. As the core team delivering this work, we need people to constructively challenge our priorities, fill in our blind spots, and provide fresh insight into the problem at hand.
“We are proud and humbled to share who has stepped up to support this work and come along with us on our journey as the Oxygen CoLab Advisory Board. I am excited to see what we can achieve as a collective this year!”
— Alex Losneanu, Oxygen CoLab Director
We are delighted to introduce our advisory board that consists of:
- Akaco Ekirapa, Health Team Leader, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) — Kenya
- Alex Rothkopf, Supply Chain Management and Data Science Consultant, PATH
- Cathy Roth, Senior Research Fellow — Infectious Diseases, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)
- David Woolnough, Deputy Director Research, Tech & Innovation, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)
- Deepika Devadas, Director, Program Strategy, Grand Challenges Canada (GCC)
- Douglas Call, Senior Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Gertrude Mapunda Kihunrwa, Human Development Team Leader, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) — Tanzania
- Dr. Himangi Bhardwaj, Senior Health Adviser, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) — India
- Kristoffer Gandrup Marino, Chief of Innovation, UNICEF
- Arnold Kyoyetera Kabbale, Health Advisor, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) — Uganda
- Lisa Smith, Global Program Leader, Market Dynamics, PATH
- Eng. Millicent Alooh HSC, PhD, Regional Director, BMET implementation at Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies
- Neelam Azmat, Portfolio Manager, Medical Products and Technologies, Grand Challenges Canada (GCC)
- Nicholas Furtado, Sen Medical Advisor, Oxygen and respiratory care, Technical Advice and Partnerships Department, Global Fund
- Noah Mataruse, Health Product Innovation Manager, UNICEF
- Pablo Vega Rojas, Technical Officer, UNITAID
- Phil Outram, Tech and Innovation Adviser, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)
- Toby Eccles, Executive Director, Social Finance
“I believe we are doing something really fresh and innovative in the oxygen space. With a mission oriented focus on reducing preventable oxygen related deaths, and a systemic approach to accelerating change & impact, we are thrilled to welcome such a range of perspectives to our work through this advisory board.”
— Phil Outram, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office
So far, our advisory board has made a significant impact on the strategic direction of our work. They have:
- Underlined the importance of a sound business case for Oxygen-as-a-Service (O2aaS), (O2aaS), as being subtly different from a sound business model. While developing good business models is a key part of our O2aaS strategy, a strong business case is also vital to help decision makers understand the relative benefits of O2 and persuade them to invest in it.
- Advised us to communicate a clearer breakdown of the different contexts in which we are piloting oxygen concentrators delivered through O2aaS. As a result we have developed a detailed breakdown of ‘facility archetypes’ that we believe will help governments better identify what particular O2aaS would suit their unique context best.
- Sharpened how we collect evidence from across the different parts of this work so that it can directly support global decision making around oxygen provision…and so much more!
We know that it will take many perspectives, lots of discussion, much grappling, hard work and collaboration, but our hope is that before too long there will be crowds in corridors across the world, admiring the technology that is providing round the clock oxygen access to patients at their time of need, including the babies under Sister Eunice’s care and the entire Kisiizi Hospital.
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This project is funded with UK International Development funding from the UK government.
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You can also get in touch directly by emailing oxygen@makingbetterfutures.org.
