NanoHealth, social enterprise concept designed by a group of students from Hyderabad based Indian School of business (ISB) has been selected for the finals of Hult Prize contest 2014. This is for the first time that an Indian team has entered the finals of Hult Prize with an innovative idea on Healthcare.

According to Dr Ashish Bondia, a primary physician who leads the ISB’s team for NanoHealth concept, most of the healthcare programmes initiated by state or central governments in India have focused mainly on communicable disease, while the non-communicable disease are ignored.

 As per one estimate, by 2030, the global burden of non-communicable disease on society will be 47 billion. Keeping that in view, Bill Clinton former US president and president of Clinton Global initiative has set the Healthcare challenge to address and tackle the non-communicable diseases in urban slums. “As part of the Healthcare challenge set by Clinton Global Initiative, we a team of six members at ISB have conceptualised an innovative idea and designed a social enterprise called NanoHealth.  This concept uses innovative technology to create local health networks for urban slum dwellers bringing them cost effective healthcare to their doorsteps,” says Dr Bondia.

The innovative healthcare model ‘NanoHealth’ mainly focuses on non-communicable diseases among slum dwellers in urban areas. The healthcare model is aimed at reducing the burden of chronic diseases by creating a local network involving the local people among the slums. Most likely the NanoHealth social healthcare concept would look to areas of under-diagnosis, non-standardized treatment, and poor prescription adherence.

Expressing happiness for being selected for the regional finals at Sao Paulo, Dr. Ashish said that Hult Prize contest is really a great platform for them to show their entrepreneurial concept at the global level. The Hult Prize is the largest student competition in the world. Over 11,000 teams from more than 300 global universities participated in the competition. After rigorous screening 170 teams were invited to the regional finals held in 6 cities London, Dubai, Sao Paulo, Boston, Shanghai and San Francisco across globe simultaneously.

The ISB team cracked the regional final at Sao Paulo. “Out of 31 teams at Sao Paulo, our team got selected for global finals. Our strength was a good mix of all departments of a good enterprise needed. Business, healthcare and technology all had a pretty good mix. All the 5 members of our team represent different areas of business viz., healthcare, business process re-engineering experts, marketing and communication experts, technology design expert and financial services and risk management  experts, this gave us an edge to prevail up on the jury,” said Dr Bondia.

Apart from ISB team, the other six finalist teams are from France, Spain, USA and Canada. All the teams will go through an accelerator programme that provides mentorship and support with up to 7 weeks of stay in Boston. The teams will make their pitch at Clinton Global Initiative’s (CGI) annual dinner hosted by former US President Bill Clinton at New York in September 2014.The audience and jury at this dinner will include Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, Heads of State & the who’s who in Healthcare & Social Entrepreneurship. The winner at CGI dinner will receive a seed capital of USD 1 Million for their social enterprise.