In July 2016 participants from Johnson & Johnson and Alliance Myanmar, a country office of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, together with local community-based organisations, Pheonix and Ratana Metta, came together to find new ways of delivering services to 3,000 people living with HIV in Yangon, Myanmar.
Vincent Pirenne from Board of Innovation led the week, giving participants the tools necessary to generate new solutions and business ideas.
“With everything changing so fast in Myanmar, it’s really important to take the ideas from this week and to test them quickly, with the lowest cost possible. It has been amazing to see the participants generate so many creative concepts - now is the time to be bold and take action!” Vincent Pirenne
As a first step towards a one stop shop, the group will try out some low cost ideas, such as charging patients to transport the blood samples from the GPs to the lab. Overall, this will save patients time and money.
At the same time the team is looking at introducing mobile communications to make it easier to deliver results from the lab to the GPs.
Ratana Metta is hoping to introduce lab services into their clinic where they treat nearly 1,000 HIV positive patients, creating their own one stop shop.
Meanwhile, Phoenix is looking to collaborate with the national bus company to put eye-catching HIV awareness messaging on bus tickets. With 20,000 bus tickets sold each day, this will ensure HIV messaging reaches young people across the country, reducing stigma and helping prevent the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Expect new developments on these projects and further innovations in the coming months!
During the week, each group came up with a variety of ideas that could be easily tested, at low cost, to increase access to HIV services and improve awareness.
A number of different ideas are currently being tested:
Alliance Myanmar are trying to overcome the barriers patients face in their on-going treatment and monitoring for HIV;
“We recognise the current burden on patients with HIV. They have to go back and forth between the GP and the lab to give blood and get their test results - patients have to miss work and spend hours in Yangon traffic. We want to introduce a one stop shop for patients, where they can get all the services they need at the same time, in the same place.”
Jet Riparip, Regional Representative Asia, International HIV/AIDS Alliance