Accelerate Cambridge venture Simprints awarded DFID grant for maternity project in Bangladesh.
Cambridge-based startup Simprints has been awarded a £250,000 grant from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) to boost a healthcare project in Bangladesh.
Simprints, supported by the ETECH Projects and Accelerate Cambridge programmes at Cambridge Judge Business School, developed a biometric fingerprint scanner that allows health care workers in developing regions to access patients’ records through the touch of a finger.
The scanner is a big help in solving long-lasting problems in the delivery of mobile services in healthcare in countries like Bangladesh. More than one-third of births in some developing countries are not registered in any way, precluding these individuals from critical services like healthcare and education. Reliable identification is essential to linking people to their health or vaccination records.
The grant will support a project aimed at improving healthcare for over 22,000 expectant mothers and their newborns in Bangladesh. Forty community health workers employed by BRAC, a Bangladesh-based NGO, will use the Simprint scanner to ensure that expectant mothers and children are regularly visited to ensure early detection of problems.
Toby Norman, CEO of Simprints, said: “This will be one of the first rollouts of Simprints technology at scale in a developing country. We’re incredibly excited to see the difference we can make with our partners at BRAC and DFID.”
In August 2014 Simprints received a $250,000 grant from the Saving Lives at Birth Grand Challenge, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which was matched to the tune of $180,000 by Cambridge’s ARM.