The “Top 11 in 2011 Innovators” were unveiled on December 4th, during a special Sunday evening reception prior to the launch of the mHealth Summit in Washington D.C. Pesinet is one of them and, as such, was invited to the 3-day conference gathering key players of the mHealth sector.

The mHealth Alliance, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, organized in November 2011 the “Top 11 in 2011 Innovators Challenge”, a first-of-its-kind challenge which recognizes pioneering mobile health professionals who have used mobile technology in innovative ways to improve health systems and outcomes in even the most remote areas of the world. The winners were announced at a reception held in advance of the mHealth Summit being held in the Washington, DC area.

The Top 11 in 2011 Innovators were selected through a process that included public nominations and voting on the mHealth Alliance’s HealthUnbound.org, as well as selection by a jury of experts. Nominations came from more than 30 countries around the world.

Innovators were  able to share their respective experience and showacse their work at the mHelath Alliance booth as well as actively participate in the conference during the 3 following days.

“As the mHealth community gathers for the annual mHealth Summit, we are excited to recognize these innovators, many of whom are working in low resource environments on behalf of poor and vulnerable populations,” said Karl Brown, Associate Director of applied technology at the Rockefeller Foundation. “We hope that the contributions of the Top 11 in 2011 will inspire many others to continue advancing the capabilities of mobile technologies to deliver positive health outcomes.”

The mHealth Alliance champions use of mobile technologies to improve health throughout the world. Working with diverse partners to integrate mHealth into multiple sectors, the Alliance serves as a convener for the mHealth community to overcome common challenges by sharing tools, knowledge, experience, and lessons learned.This year’s mHealth Summit was the 3rd edition of the annual gathering and brought together around 3, 000 people including leaders in government, the private sector, industry, academia, providers, and not-for-profit organizations from across the mHealth ecosystem.

>> To discover the Top 11 Innovators, click here.

Pesinet has been referenced in a recent white paper by Advanced Development for Africa (ADA) on key elements for the sucessful scale-up of mHealth programs. Pesinet was an important contributor to the report as an expert and as a case study.

Commissioned by ADA to assess current implementations of successful mHealth programs in developing country contexts, this white paper identifies elements necessary for successfully scaling up and highlights best practices and specific programmatic, operational, policy and global strategy recommendations that can promote the scale up of mHealth in developing countries.

Profiled in this report are several select mHealth programs that have been piloted and are currently in the scale up phase, and have proven enough success that they should be considered as models for other initiatives to follow. Drawing from these case studies as well as interviews with mHealth experts, including Patricia Mechael of the mHealth Alliance, David Aylward of Ashoka, Brooke Partridge of Vital Wave Consulting, Anne-Roos Weil of Pesinet and Getachew Sahlu of the WHO, the primary goal of this white paper is to provide evidence and recommendations that will enable mHealth initiatives to better plan their own scale up beyond successful pilot phases.

>> You can download the report by clicking here.

The International Prize of Convergences 2015 was awarded to Pesinet on May 4, 2011, during a ceremony at the City Hall in Paris, on the occasion of the 4th edition of the Convergence 2015 Forum.

Convergences 2015 Annual Forum aims at encouraging exchanges and partnerships towards a greater social impact in society and poverty reduction.

For its 4th edition, Convergence 2015 and the Paris City Council, in partnership with Le Monde and the European Commission, launched the Convergences 2015 Prize,  to reward the best partnerships between an social enterprise and a company or a public institution contributing to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Pesinet was nominated and elected International Laureate among nearly 20 candidates for its  partnership with the Ministry of Health of Mali and the local primary health facilities. The award was given by Pierre Schapira, Deputy Mayor for International Relations, European Affairs and Francophonie.

Pesinet’s CEO Anne Roos-Weil, and other team members present at the ceremony, welcomed the announcement of the results with great emotion.

During her speech, the CEO welcomed the initiative of Convergences 2015 and its partners. She recalled that the integrating Pesinet’s program into the healthcare system of Mali had been at the heart of Pesinet’s approach in the design and implementation of the service, and was a condition to carry out legitmate actions on a daily basis.

This award is a wonderful recognition of the work done over the past two years with health facilities and health institutions in Mali. It comes with an endowment of € 10 000, which will allow Pesinet to continue its efforts and work to extend service into new health centers.

A huge thank you to Convergence 2015 and its partners as well as the members of the jury, a big congratulations also to Cresus, winner of the France category for its program on over-indebtedness prevention, as well as the other nominees. The team also thanks Adrien de Triconot, Pierre Jullien and Le Monde de L’Economie for the tremendous media coverage given to the program at the forum. Pesinet also thanks all participants who came to discover its work on the exhibition stand at Convergences 2015.

See article published in Le Monde (in French only) :

>> L’association Crésus et Pesinet Prix du forum Convergences 2015
>> Six projets sociaux sélectionnés pour les prix “Convergences 2015
>> Anne Roos-Weil: ” Le but est d’encourager les comportements préventifs”

Pesinet is referenced by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) among 50 innovative initiatives, and the only one dedicated to child healthcare, in its report Creating Value for All: Strategies for Doing Business with the Poor that focuses on private initiatives targeting very low income revenue population designed to achieve the United Nations Millenium Development Goals.

Pesinet has been selected among 300 projects in competition in the world to take part in the grand final of the Global Social Venture Competition organized by the Haas School of Business of the Berkeley University in California, USA, in April 2009.

Pesinet was awarded the prize Coup de Cœur — Les Echos 2007 as part of the joint program Creating an Innovative Product created by ESSEC Business School and Ecole Centrale de Paris.

After having won the French final organized at the ESSEC Business School, followed by the European, African and Middle Eastern regional final organized at the London Business School, on April 23 ^rd Pesinet participated in the international grand final of the Global Social Venture Competition. Ten projects were selected among the 311 social enterprise projects submitted from across the world to participate in the final selection that took place at the prestigious Haas School of Business at the University of Berkeley in California.

The GSVC is an international Business Plan competition that recognizes projects linking economic viability and social impact. It allows the participants to meet investors interested in social entrepreneurship projects, to be coached by professionals in the sector and, for the winners, to receive prize money ranging from $5,000 to $25,000. This competition, created in 1999 and initiated by students from the Haas School of Business at the University of Berkeley in California, has little by little taken on an international scope by relying on a network of academic partners in charge of selecting the best projects on their continent.

Anne Roos-Weil convinced the investors and social entrepreneurs brought together in the successive juries in Paris and London (Ashoka France and the United Kingdom, Macif, Caisse d’Epargne, Bridges Ventures, Apax Partners, Cool2care, NSF international, Catalyst Fund …). She then set out for Berkeley to defend her project with Antoine de Clerck, co-founder of Pesinet, and Jean-Claude Charlet, member of Pesinet’s advisory board.

The team presented its innovative program aiming to reduce child mortality in Africa to an audience of 100 people and a jury bringing together philanthropic investors and globally recognized social entrepreneurs: the Acumen Fund, OneWorld Health, the NewSchools Venture Fund, Gray Matters Capital, the Lemerson Foundation.

The experience made it possible for the team to benefit from the advice of numerous social entrepreneurship experts and to develop contacts with investors and project sponsors at a symposium on social entrepreneurship that took place on April 24 ^th in San Francisco in honour of the 10th anniversary of the competition. They also benefited from the media buzz on Next Billion, the highly respected blog focusing on projects targeting  populations at the “bottom of the pyramid”.

Pesinet is one of 50 case studies selected from a panel of 400 projects and presented in a report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), as part of the « Growing Inclusive Markets » initiative. This report identifies private initiatives developing innovative and sustainable business models that benefit low income population and analyzes the strategies developed to include the « Bottom of the Pyramid » in the value chain as clients, producers, contractors, employees, etc..

The Growing Inclusive Markets initiative, led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is a platform to facilitate the engagement of all actors for more inclusive business models so that the pursuits of profit and human progress can work to mutual advantage.

It is based on empirical research, as well as the contribution of a prestigious advisory committee consisting of representatives from development agencies, international trade organizations and involving hundreds of companies and experts from renowned research institutions.

Pesinet was recognized as a promising inclusive business model contributing to three Millennium Development Goals: objectives #4 – reduce child mortality, #6 – combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, other diseases, and #8 – promote global partnership for development.

The in-depth study of 50 projects at work in the world, including Pesinet, combining strong impact on development, commercial viability and potential for replication on a large scale, has enabled UNDP to identify effective methods to overcome the most common barriers when design services for the poor. 5 strategies have been particularly highlighted.

The model adopted by Pesinet implements three of these strategies: ‘Adapt products and processes’ for its innovative use of technology, ‘Capitalizing on the strengths of the poor’ in its proximity work and model of voluntary financial contribution from beneficiaries and ‘Combining resources and capabilities of different actors’, for its integration into the existing health system.

Following this recognition, Pesinet was invited to present its innovative concept by the managers of UNDP at a conference dedicated to private initiatives in the field of health organized in March 2009 by IBLF (International Business Leaders Forum) and GAVI Alliance to promote private sector involvement in achieving the health-realated Millenium Development Goals. (More information on the event …)

Read the UNDP report
Read the case study dedicated to Pesinet