Our project aims to cut to the chase, to, as the Nike Corporation says, “Just do it.” Together with Orange, FHI 360 will design and deploy mHealth products and services that are enabled by digital financial services (DFS) and that contribute to users’ financial protection at least one country in West Africa. We will accomplish this through three complementary approaches: 1) design and testing mHealth products and services in at least two markets, comparing and contrasting user preferences; 2) Testing and identification of which marketing messages lead to the highest uptake of these services, including health savings accounts; 3) Using mobile network data analysis to understand how users behave when sending or receiving mobile money transfers, and how they respond to marketing messages. The investment from Digital Square will be used to fund these three processes. FHI 360 will leverage its expertise in responsible data, as well as its experience successfully implementing DFS, health and mHealth projects to lead implementation of the processes. Orange will leverage its market-specific expertise, data analytic capacities and business operations to participate in bringing well-designed mHealth products to market. Upon completion of our landscape report, Orange will conduct its own public-facing evaluation of the project and publish a blog/article detailing the research. If the project identifies viable DFS-based products and services, Orange will consider deploying scaling them within multiple markets. Our theory is that, through developing and testing new mHealth services enabled with DFS, we will identify and enable the widespread deployment of them throughout multiple countries.
Tamara Shukakidze-Demuria, Associate Technical Director, Crisis Response, FHI 360. Tamara has extensive experience in financial Inclusion in emergencies cash programming and transformative digital solutions. USAID/Haiti named her a “Mobile Money Pioneer” for launching e-transfer modalities for food-insecure populations. She has served on the executive committee of the Collaborative Cash Delivery (CCD) network. She speaks English, French, Russian and Georgian. Ellen Galdava, Technical Officer, FHI 360, will manage the overall project. Ms. Galdava has rich experience managing DFS research projects and is highly sought after within FHI for her managerial excellence. Ellen managed production of and provided technical contributions to The Role of Digital Financial Services in Accelerating USAID Health Goals. Jill Shemin, Private Sector & Digital Finance/Digital tools for Emerging Markets Consultant, will play a key role in engaging users and in product/service ideation and testing. She brings hands-on operational experience evaluating how digital finance landscapes and enabling environments work in different countries. Jill has strong skills in distilling information for business plans. Jill is fluent in conversational French and is based in Senegal. Trinity Zan, Digital Health Advisor, FHI 360, Trinity is currently the Co-Chair of the Global Digital Health Network. Trinity will advise on product and service design remotely. | Erwan Le Quentrec, Orange, will participate in the project management and evaluation design. He manages a team of researchers in the Sociology and Economics of Networks and Services (SENSE) Department of Orange Labs. Erwan also coordinates collaborative innovation for the Africa, Middle East (AMEA) region. His activity aims to structure, implement and evaluate experiments, for example, in the fields of mobile learning, digital inclusion or energy with partners such as AFD, USAID, multiple NGOs, startups, universities and Orange subsidiaries. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Burgundy (IREDU). | Stefania Rubrich, Orange will serve as data scientist. Since 2015 she has worked at ORANGE’s SENSE Department. Currently, as researcher, she works in the area of mobile-phone metadata analysis to uncover insights into human behavior, to address the most challenging global problems, in support of development goals. She holds a BSc and a MSc in Biomedical Engineering and a PhD in Bioengineering and Bioinformatics from the University of Pavia, as well as a MSc in Mathematics for Data Science and Big Data from Ecole Polytechnique Paris.
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FHI 360
FHI 360 is an international nonprofit working to improve the health and well-being of people in the United States and around the world.