The Diabetes Compass puts partnerships at the core of everything we do. We collaborate with highly skilled public, private, and civil society sector partners that share our goal of improving diabetes and hypertension care, fostering partnerships that are both country specific and global.
We co-create innovative digital health solutions
Diabetes and hypertension are global health crises that are hitting low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) the hardest. Today, one billion people in LMICs live with hypertension and only 10% of them have controlled blood pressure. Of the 350 million people in LMICs who live with diabetes, 77% do not receive adequate care.
These numbers will grow significantly in the next decade, putting immense pressure on healthcare workers and healthcare systems. As hypertension affects 70% of all people living with diabetes, these diseases are closely intertwined. Collectively, they stand as leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide.
The Challenge
Our Response
In response to this challenge, the Diabetes Compass leverages the immense potential of digital innovation to bridge healthcare gaps and meet real needs for diabetes and hypertension care in low-resource settings. We collaborate closely with partners in selected launch countries to support digital transformation of national health systems while simultaneously launching easy-to-use solutions that strengthen diabetes and hypertension care today.
Launching in Tanzania, Sri Lanka, and Malawi, our solutions focus on improving screening and diagnosis, strengthening health information systems, and building the capacity of healthcare professionals.
We apply a needs-based innovation approach as a key enabler in ensuring our solutions address context-specific challenges, placing a deep understanding of needs as the starting point of the innovation process. Users at the facility and community levels in launch countries are routinely engaged in the design process to ensure the solutions reflect their values, wants, and needs.
Our solution development process relies on an extensive research and exploration phase, ensuring that the development of the solutions is based on sound local insights. To arrive at these insights, we have conducted a series of workshops, in-depth interviews, care pathway assessments, and clinical practice observations with a wide range of actors including policy makers, practitioners, patients, and digital experts. We continuously monitor and evaluate the impact and relevance of solutions to ensure improvements over time.
Planning for long-term sustainability is a key Diabetes Compass priority. Our approach starts and ends with centering on the people benefiting from our solutions, as well as our partners, anchoring solutions in national contexts. We have followed a values-driven process informed by the nine 'Principles for Digital Development', taking a needs-based and human-centered design approach to innovation, ensuring that solutions are responsive to local needs and systems. In particular, we work based on the four principles below: