Idea Prize Winner! Sucre Blue
Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.
Impact: What is the impact of the work to date? Also describe the projected future impact for the coming years.
Financial Sustainability Plan: What is this solution’s plan to ensure financial sustainability?
Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?
Founding Story
Sucre Blue
Erin
Little
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Outside of Tier I and Tier II cities, there is currently no distribution blood glucose strips within villages. Patients are also unable to purchase them individually, unlike many products in India, which results in higher upfront costs and increases the barriers to purchasing the product. Blood glucose monitors currently retail at 4000 rupees, or roughly $80. We believe by lowering the cost of the strip, and layering it with a peer-based service model where the monitor is used free-of-cost, the patient will be financially empowered to make informed decisions regarding their own health purchases.
This model is meant to ensure scalability across states within India and even beyond as it addresses a critical need in the public health system. It provides a win-win for all stakeholders; free marketing to institutions for affordable follow-up treatment; increases patient flow; and provides significant opportunity for employing women and educating entire communities.
Sucre Blue trains and employs low-income village women outside of Bangalore to be community health workers within their communities. This peer-based approach uses women who have a background in either treating a diabetic within their household, or themselves. Each community health worker is responsible for going door-to-door to screen, diagnose, and provide affordable blood glucose strips to those with hypertension, diabetes, or cardiac issues.
For each diagnosis, the community health worker follows up with the individual patient and uses SMS technology to collect and send patient data across to the partnered clinical institution. Each patient will also have the ability to buy the blood glucose strips, which currently retail at 25 rupees for a discounted rate of 15.
Sucre Blue leverages existing resources within the healthcare system and uses it to connect on a grassroots level. What this means is we establish partnerships across stakeholders- from clinics, to the government, and the public health system. We provide incentives to get everyone involved despite their differences to ensure patients have every available option to them, but they agree on the basic need for this program as a way to prevent unnecessary strain on an already burdened system by empowering women with the tools they need to take care of their community.
Our first priority is listening to the needs of our customers and our community health workers. Since our model relies off the peer mentoring and support of those with chronic illness, our obligation lies with making sure they are healthy before going into the field. That they are able to bring the right message, because their own lives have improved with this program, or the lives of those they are caregiving for. These village women are our ultimate support, and without their continued faith in our efforts, we would be unable to move forward.
, MO, Lee's Summit, Jackson County
Bring accessible healthcare to communities in emerging markets
Chronic care
Prevention, Detection, Intervention, Follow-up, Long-term care.
Idea (poised to launch)
Patient-centered design, Redesign of the public healthcare system for more efficiency (in terms of processes, structure etc.), New approaches to distribution of health products and services, Unconventional partnerships (between traditional healthcare players and players outside healthcare).
Technology, Education/training.
Sucre Blue provides leverage to existing medical infrastructure by providing data, access, and affordability to empower and educate patients to self-management of chronic illnesses.
Our primary customers are rural and peri-urban Indians earning less than $2 a day at-risk or already diagnosed with a chronic illness which requires consistent data and inputs from medical practitioners. These individuals live in communities without current access to hospitals, doctors, or pharmacies within 20 kilometers.
We primarily use our community health workers to provide free screenings to the public for diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. By providing a free door-to-door screening we receive data up front that will allow the CHW to follow up appropriately with each customer, as well as provide a strong relationship between the patient and peer leader who is trained to provide these services within their communities.
Service – this business plan revolves around the offering of the following services:
• Community Health Workers (CHWs) will provide glucometer-based diabetes screening for non-diabetics and monitoring for diabetic patients. In addition, they will also conduct blood pressure monitoring and BMI calculations.
• Each CHW will be associated with a hospital (Primary Health Center (PHC)) to whom they will refer at-risk patients.
• CHWs will keep logs of all patient data collected,
• For follow up patients, blood sugar readings will be sent to the PHC through SMS. This data will form the basis for the metrics we will use to quantify the impact of our business model. CHW advise patients based on their current blood sugar level, as well as selling affordable products.
We face organizational challenges based on the difficultly of implementing medical work internationally. There have been several significant changes by the IRS that make raising funds, especially under fiscal sponsors, more difficult. Improving our M&E and assuring quality of our programs is difficult as well; and we are coordinating with our CHW to provide monthly check-ins with all female chw in order to ensure lessons are shared and collaborated to retain best practices of these microbusinesses. And of course, working with the government in any capacity is a continued challenge for a variety of reasons- from constant lobbying, follow ups, and ensuring the working relationship with the government stays strong.
We will implement our service model in 3 phases:
Phase 1: Pilot roll-out from a single PHC supporting 20 CHWs
Phase 2: Expand operations to 4 PHCs serving 400 CHWs
Phase 3: Scale up operations to 50 PHCs serving 5000 CHWs
Phase 4: Optional for-profit expansion
New customer group(s), New regions(s).
We also differ significantly in terms of timing; the Indian government has recently developed a 2 rps blood strip prototype in association with BITS Pilani which aims to test men over the age of 30 an women that are pregnant for diabetes. There are currently no inlays of how they can distribute as well as keep their costs low aside from our model available in the Indian market.
Our focus is on improved patient complaince, financially sustainability for CHWs (revenue generation), and ensuring that patients are empowered to make educated health decisions for themselves. We believe that impact at an individual level and providing high-quality service component and technical and customer service training to our female CHWs will enable us to be a leader in NCD treatment.
, KA, Bangalore
1. Number of PL/CHWs trained (target = 15)
2. Number of adults pre-screened using Diabetes Risk Score [N=25000]
3. Number of adults screened: blood glucose and blood pressure [N=25000]
4. Number of adults referred to JSMC [N=2000] for initial, quarterly and annual medical review.
5. Number of newly diagnosed diabetics [and hypertensives]; also IFG, IGT, and Prehypertension.
6. Number of diabetics provided regular monitoring
7. Number/percent of diabetics with improved health outcomes [comparison of Pre and Post health parameters].
8. Number of blood glucose strips sold; revenues generated from sale of blood glucose per CHW
Yes, this solution could be rolled out in any country where basic diagnostics and door-to-door services could be implemented .
We believe in 3 years we have reached 200,000 patients directly, and have reached over 1 million indirectly from our free screening efforts as well as partnerships with PHC across India and at the government level.
Our currently financing strategy depends entirely on donations until the pilot has been completed. We have a diversified strategy of support ranging from individual donors, companies, foundations, and events to contribute to a multi-pronged approach to fundraising. We will be setting up a Section 25 company under Indian law which will allow us to take on revenue as a part of our program, however since we are in early stage that is not an option for us at this time.
Approximately 10 once full pilot has been reached
Approximately 10 once full pilot has been reached
Friends and family, Patients, Private businesses, Other beneficiaries.
N/A
Private businesses, Regional government, National government.
Approximately 10 once pilot has been completed
NGOs, Regional government, National government.
Each female CHW will generate revenues from the cost of her service coupled with low-cost blood glucose (BCG) strips set at 15 rps as opposed to market retail price of 25 for each individual strip.
80
Diversified strategy.
We have received a lot of interest from pharmaceutical companies interested in connecting their current markets and entering more frontier spaces, as blood glucose strips are currently only available in Tier II cities throughout India for the market leaders in BCG strips, Lifescan (One Touch). Sucre Blue offers a significant opportunity to any private sector company looking to connect and develop rural and urban markets within India, as well as develop a rural distribution system across India. As this screens not just for diabetes, but hypertension and cardiac complications, the public health benefits are for a variety of NCD which have long or lifetime-management required from the patient.
We hope to have each community health worker generate enough income from the sale of the strips and her services to make this program sustainable within two years.
Idea phase
N/A