#ENERGHY, Creating New Business Models Aimed at Democratizing Health for All

Gillian Murphy and Marlita Putri Ekasari undertook the #ENERGHY postgraduate course “Energising Global Health Innovation and Entrepreneurship” in September 2020 and were awarded with an invitation to the Joint Accelaration Programme offered by StartUB! and NUI Galway Launchpad for their best solution pitch to a ‘Médicines Sans Frontières’ Challenge in Central African Republic. Moreover they were awarded with the StartUB! pitch accessit prize. Now they share their experience doing the Acceleration Programme.

Gillian and I had the privilege to participate in the Joint Accelaration Programme with 10 hours of mentorship sessions after winning the 1^st prize Student Choice Award at the ENERGHY summer school programme 2020. We were delighted to have our mentors, Neil Ferguson (NUI Galway) and Nicolas Escartin (StartUB!), guide us on building our team and focusing on the persona and problem for our new project throughout the first 5 x 1-hour mentoring sessions. We worked hard to strategise our time on developing our pitch presentation for our proposed innovation. During the mentorship experience, we were struggling as a team with time differences; Gillian lives in Ireland and I live in Indonesia, so there was a significant time difference of seven hours. However, we overcame these challenges working closely and communicating together, and with the help of our mentors who kept us focused on the project challenge and towards our goal.

Gillian and I had the privilege to participate in the Joint Accelaration Programme after winning the 1^st prize Student Choice Award at the ENERGHY summer school

We developed our project concept, NovoGel, in the rest of the 5 x 1-hour mentorship sessions. Our team name, later on, is our innovation idea. We developed this idea through our ambition to support vulnerable group of patients with chronic disease by monitoring patient compliance to medication. Finally, after long discussions, we focused on helping patients with Type II Diabetes Mellitus. I became very familiar with this topic when I developed a mobile application, Apotech.id, with one of my colleagues, Muh.Fakhrurrifqy, M.Cs in Indonesia to monitor their medication in 2019.

Gillian also works in a lab to create a drug delivery innovation for patients with Type II Diabetes Mellitus as part of her PhD in Biomedical Engineering. We decided to combine our experiences into developing our pitch presentation for a drug delivery technology in Type II Diabetes Mellitus.

We developed our project concept, NovoGel, to support vulnerable group of patients with chronic disease by monitoring patient compliance to medication

In the last 5 hours of mentorship sessions, we focused on preparing our pitch deck presentation. We welcomed Matheus to be our mentor for two hours, working in total with three mentors in the StartUB! experience. In our 5-minute presentation, we were confident to deliver it in front of judges, and Gillian presented it well. Gillian incorporated her PhD experience into the pitch delivery.

Starting the StartUB! experience from blank canvas to the final pitch presentation was not easy. Trust, respect, and communication kept our team strong. Our mentors always encourage us to be the best version of ourselves and to bring this into the team dynamic. Finally, we completed all the tasks and we are proud that our project was acknowledged as being the special mention in the StartUB! Sprint Awards 2021 on 4 March 2021. It just so happens that four days after this event, we celebrated International Women day on 8 March 2021. I am thankful to see that once again, girl power works! I have had a tremendous experience during this intensive programme with Gillian, working for better health and a better tomorrow.

#ENERGHY Postgraduate Course – Application open!