When I first read this article, I thought I'd missed something. Watsi isn't funding the coverage--they primarily provided a way to efficiently administer it. That seems a lot more sustainable than what I initially assumed.<p>Cost savings and scalability seem to come from:<p>* Easy to ensure treatment guidelines are being followed (so it's catch and eliminate non-administrative waste).<p>* Avoiding more expensive interventions by providing cheaper, early intervention.<p>* Easy to track who's enrolled (which also kills the free-rider problem).<p>* Overall less time (=money) spent on administration in general.<p>I'm curious if these can be teased apart. What percentage of savings is from early intervention vs. unnecessary treatments?<p>I'm also curious why 98% of people signed up. Was it good outreach/marketing, increased trust that the system would be beneficial to them (as opposed to bureaucratic delays), or free-riders no longer getting a free ride? Did it get cheaper? More reliable? Why didn't the other 2% sign up?<p>I'm sure these variables will all be fairly different when they go on to the next community, but they'd be interesting to look at.<p>I'm also eager to see what this does for the medical infrastructure (and economic growth) down the line. This should make it easier for places offering medical care to get their funding efficiently and quickly, so I would expect them to scale as need grows better than they would otherwise. I hope this means also much more stable school attendance and economic stability for families and communities. Is this more cost-effective and sustainable than just buying people bed nets? Track this and find out. A lot of funding will flow to whatever can be demonstrated to be maximally effective, and it's important for us to find those interventions.
This is awesome!<p>Is there something in the works that would make it possible for 'donors' to cover the annual enrollment costs for others? Or would that defeat the purpose?<p>And this is off-topic but that's brilliant photography - kudos to the photographer(s)!
It feels like there aren't a lot of people in this thread that have spent any time in this space, specifically health care in East Africa or the wild wild world of NGOs / aid there.<p>This has the same breathless and "six weeks of hacking to save babies" feel to it that every other project starts out with. What exactly is different? There are a zillion mini-EMRs operating in East Africa, especially Uganda, what most lack is real integration and cooperation with the government to make them sustainable and scale. What is the story there for Watsi? Why will Watsi avoid the complexity of a real EMR like OpenMRS? Are you integrating with them?<p>There's a slide somewhere that I think UNICEF put together of all the NGO (as in non-UG-government, not just non profit) health projects active in Uganda. It is this hilarious demonstration of the crazy amounts of bootstrapped projects exactly like this and just how much they overlap.<p>To the founders, have you read The White Man's Burden? If not, please bump it to the top of your list.<p>Source: I lived in neighboring Rwanda for 5 years and work in this space, including projects in Uganda. It is a fascinating space with lots of opportunity for good, but also one that requires real introspection on why you are pursuing particular strategies and whether that is being driven by ego or truly because you think it is the best for the people. Almost always the answer is that no, a new thing isn't required, but rather you should be pitching in with someone else or building upon an imperfect system to better it, because that system is government owned and managed and thus will be sustainable and gives the country and people agency. This is why aid is hard work, because most good organizations have moved past the "hey, look what we built you stage" to instead trying to build capacity and institutionalize changes. That is so much more difficult but much better tack, though my beliefs are still more in the camp of direct cash transfers these days.
A feel like I'm hearing the middle of a conversatoin<p>The language used to describe this program seems to land it in the US' medical system debate. EG <i>enrolling in health coverage.</i> A lot of the comments here are focusing on that debate.<p>I imagine the situation is different enough (industry, patients, funding, etc.) to make the comparison something of an analogy.<p>In any case, I'd like to hear a bit more about watsi's role and goals. Is this a medical insurance/bureaucracy infrastructure governments can adopt? An alternative way to raise/use donor aid, funding insurance instead of clinics? Are "crowdfunding" and "coverage" separate initiatives?
Wow.<p>With my admittedly limited knowledge, it appears to me that this is one of the best efforts in our industry, changing the world for the better and directly making a dramatic difference in the lives of the most vulnerable.<p>Watsi, and the people behind it, give me hope for our species, despite the state of politics (both in where I live, the US, and in the world in general) or whatever other cynical reason one could come up with.<p>When we come together, we really can do great things... don't give up hope.<p>Of course, many thanks to the Watsi team. I hope that I will have the opportunity to join you someday.
Fingerprint based system seems like an interesting choice. Don't these people do a lot of manual labor that scratches fingers? I sometimes have identifying trouble myself due to finger damage and I sit in an office.
Congratulations Chase and the team, it's incredible to see such a complex product built in such a quick time period. How many folks from the dev team were in Uganda? And is this tool open source?
FTA:"193 of the world's governments share a goal to achieve universal health coverage by 2030." What does this mean? Aren't governments always paying lip service to some form of "universal coverage"? Isn't that one of the goals of any good government?
<a href="https://watsi.org/faq#how-does-watsi-handle-patient-privacy" rel="nofollow">https://watsi.org/faq#how-does-watsi-handle-patient-privacy</a><p>"how do you handle privacy?" "yes"
State-sponsored universal coverage: "that's for commies! Not acceptable!"<p>Silicon Valley VC-based universal coverage sponsored with crowdfunding: "wooooho that's super great! I love technology"<p>I would laugh if It wasn't for the milions not being able to afford basic healthcare.
What I don't get about USA mentality is that Americans collectively pay >600B/year to fund military[0], trillions worth of pointless wars[1] via taxes and are happy about that, but when it comes to paying some extra to fund their <i>own</i> and fellow citizens healthcare (which costs nearly <i>twice less</i> than military spending[2]), suddenly it's somehow against free market and "American spirit". Is it a paramount of government brainwashing, lobbying or something else?<p>0. <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/02/how-us-defense-spending-stacks-up-against-the-rest-of-the-world.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/02/how-us-defense-spending-stac...</a><p>1. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-usa-funding/u-s-cbo-estimates-2-4-trillion-long-term-war-costs-idUSN2450753720071024" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-usa-funding/u-s-cbo-...</a><p>2. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_Stat...</a>
This isn't going to work.<p>It looks like they are just appifying the missionariy/charity elements already going on in african nations, not providing universal healthcare. To have real universal health care would involve a lot of infrastructure building and education which would be way beyond what a small start up could do.
Healthcare is complicated and expensive. This startup comes out with an app, a fingerprint scanner, and some compelling images, and now people are willing to hand over their money to some brand new company claiming they will bring universal healthcare to the masses.<p>Rather than develop a long-term set of healthcare provider alternatives, they're depending on selling a story and getting funding from people sensitive to heart-warming stories on the internet to "change the world". If any link in their public relations chain is broken, there goes the project.<p>I really like the idea. But copying a Sally Struthers late-80s TV commercial probably isn't going to solve healthcare.