Discovery Entrepreneurs MedTech Silicon Valley Programme
27 November – 03 December 2016
Technology is rapidly changing the healthcare industry and enabling individuals to spend less time in the doctor's office. This year alone, millions of American consumers will have their first video consults, receive prescriptions through health apps, manage medical expenses and use their smartphones as personal diagnostic tools. Over the past three years, the healthcare venture industry has generated $55 billion for Limited Partners back to investors, with $1.76 billion alone invested in Biopharma in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Discovery, in partnership with En-novate, is taking a first-ever trip to Silicon Valley, USA for for South Africa's most innovative tech-enabled health and wellness Enterprises. Our weeklong trip will look at how technology is transforming the American healthcare system, new innovations designed for emerging market consumers, and alternative approaches to venture capital.
Discovery Entrepreneurs MedTech Silicon Valley Programme is a new and innovative Enterprise and Supplier Development support offering by Discovery. The programme objectives are to provide local medtech entrepreneurs with the opportunity to network and learn in a global market, as well as gain access to tailored support for business growth.
The selected entrepreneurs will spend a week in the San Francisco Bay area exploring the latest in global technology-driven innovation. Programme participants will also be provided with pre and post trip business development support and facilitated access to procurement, supply chain and investment opportunities within Discovery.
Allison Martin
UDoTest
Allison is the founder and CEO of UDoTest, a self-testing medical company that is changing the way people get tested for infections. UDoTest offers self-collected, laboratory analysed, and doctor interpreted screening tests to customers in an effort to improve the uptake of screening for treatable illnesses in South Africa and abroad.
UDoTest has already screened thousands of men and women for HPV and other STDs across the globe, and its model, which includes free counselling and referral services, is well-established and tested. UDoTest has expanded its range of tests offering the UDoHPVTest and UDoSTDTest, to the UDoColonTest and the UDoGlutenTest. Expect in the near future an online virtual consult platform for experts.
Andrew Brown
Mediswitch
Andrew is the Managing Executive of MediSwitch, a division of Bytes Healthcare Solutions, part of the South African Alton Group of Companies.
He has over 25 years’ experience in Information Technology and Enterprise Business Systems, primarily working in the utilities, manufacturing and healthcare industries throughout the Middle East.
Prior to joining MediSwitch, he was the Managing Director of MEDITECH South Africa. MEDITECH supplies, implements and maintains hospital information systems. He also worked for Nampak, a large packaging manufacturing company in various IT positions, including Business Systems Manager, Business Intelligence Manager and Business Optimisation Manager.
He holds an MBA from the Wits Business School.
Dayne Morkel
Thinta Diagnostics
Dayne holds an MBA, and is the Director of Thinta Diagnostics, a non-invasive medical diagnostics company focused primarily on maternal and child health. As its flagship device, Thinta has developed a non-invasive anaemia screening device suitable for rural settings. Thinta hopes that this device will dramatically reduce the number of deaths related to post-partum hemorrhage and reduce the incidence of anaemia in Africa.
Dean Hodgkiss
Look See Do
Dean is the founder of Looksee.do, a company that seeks to assist medical equipment manufacturers grow market share in low-resource emerging markets through optimised customer support.
Before devoting his efforts fulltime to Looksee.do, he worked at Philips Healthcare, where he was responsible for the after-sales service business in Southern Africa. Having begun his career “getting his hands dirty” as a technician performing maintenance and repairs on a range of medical equipment, he came to realise that there was a fundamental disconnect between the customer support models employed by multinational equipment manufacturers, and the actual needs of the customers in these low-resource settings.
Looksee.do was born as a vehicle to take on this challenge, and has since established a committed and talented team of biomedical engineers and developers who are pursuing the vision of making healthcare technology available everywhere, all of the time.
Graham Rowe
Sancreed
Graham is a scientist who previously worked as a strategy consultant and insurance industry executive. He won $300K in a national South African entrepreneurial reality TV show in 2012, and used that seed capital to start Guidepost, where he is currently the CEO. Guidepost connects people living with diabetes with an expert personal coach. Its software guides the nurse-coach and patient through the complex, data-rich process of diabetes care, including complex clinical and behavioural interventions. Over the past four years, the Guidepost platform has delivered 52,000 consults to over 5,000 patients, proving exceptional clinical outcomes with almost 500 000 clinical data points collected and analysed.
The company has recently expanded to the UK, and is launching pilots in London and Edinburgh in late 2016. To accelerate this expansion, Guidepost is currently raising a Series A funding round.
Jacques du Toit
Patient Focus
Jacques spent 15 years post Varsity in the Pharmaceutical environment. Thereafter, he spent 3 years in medical funding and managed care sector.
In 2001, he started his own business. Jacques has a fundamental shift and belief that curative care benefits and reimbursements incentives are unsustainable. He believes that we need to change our entire reimbursement model to a wellness personalized preventative care reimbursement. Test more, prescribe less and delay visits to hospitals.
Jacques has a “can do” attitude and has a love for disruptive business models that add value to the payer in this case the member/patient.
Lebo Shange
Coincido
Lebo has 10 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical/medical industry. Her company, Coincido, is focused on sourcing and supplying innovative products that assist patients to self-diagnose and reduce time spent in front of healthcare professionals and costs. Its primary customer base is the private sector, but it is looking to expand into the public sector, where the majority of the population is serviced. Coincido believes in identifying laboratory tests that can be replaced with rapid tests in order to save time and costs, and ease the burden on the National Health Laboratory Service. It is also interested in patient monitoring technology that will save home test results and send it to the Healthcare Professional for monitoring and intervention.
Masego Mhajane
M-Squared Medicals
Masego has over 13 years’ experience in the medical engineering field. Her company, M-Squared Medical, specialises in medical equipment sales, rental, advisory and maintenance. She has experience in general hospital equipment, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging as well as ultrasound Imaging. She was recognised by Toshiba Medical in Japan as one of the few women trained on CT equipment, and was also recognised by Toshiba Medical Japan as a Regional Instructor for Toshiba Ultrasound Equipment - a certificate is only held by two individuals in the African Sub-Saharan region; this qualifies her to conduct technical training that is on par with training received from the manufacturer.
Nic Klopper
hearX Group
Nic has founded five successful business and exited three. He is currently the CEO of hearScreen. In addition to that, he is the founder and chairman of Build Volume, South Africa’s market leader in 3D printed bureau services and 3D printer sales. He is also an avid property investor, with a diversified portfolio of assets across South Africa.
Nneile Nkholise
Med Tech
Nneile is a social entrepreneur and founder of iMed Tech, which manufactures custom-made breast prosthesis using Computer-aided design techniques and additive manufacturing technologies. She holds a Btech Mechanical and was one of the finalists in the SAB Foundation Social Innovation awards 2015, and in the development category and people’s choice award. She was recognised as Africa’s top female innovator at the World Economic Forum on Africa, held in Rwanda in 2016.
Nisha Maharaj
Niche Integrated Solutions
Niche Integrated Solutions (NIS) was established with the sole purpose of meeting the demands of technology within the corporate South Africa. It aims to create a niche market to bring innovative and global best practice technologies into the country, thus inspiring radical technological transformation. Her long-term objective is to inspire ICT entrepreneurs to achieve their objectives and ambitions. NIS is helping to empower 1,000 ICT business entrepreneurs in the City of Johannesburg.
Patrick Carmody
UX Foundry
Patrick started his career as a strategic planner in communications agencies in South Africa and London. His digital career started after working with Groupon during the period of its South African launch. He was captivated by the commercial promise of disruptive business models and the network effect that they can create. He started UX Foundry in 2013, and after starting out as a digital development house, it moved into the product development realm, where it has had success with X&Go (custom instant messaging for business) and uWina (an online promotional competition platform).
Robin De Cauwer
LifeAssay Diagnostics
Robin currently works for LifeAssay Diagnostics, a Cape Town-based biotech company involved in the design, research, development, production and commercialisation of point-of-care (POC) diagnostic tests for human, veterinary and industrial use. He is the product manager/specialist for LifeAssay’s new range of commercial products, and is also the company’s marketing and sales developer.
The range he markets includes the world’s first 3-in-1 fat burn test called LIPOstix ,which is fast, easy and 99% accurate, as well as SPORTstix for sports performance and monitoring. All of the commercial tests will be combined with a mobile application for the management of one’s lifestyle, disorder or disease. LifeAssay Diagnostics also specialises in personalised medical products for cardiac diseases, diabetes and oncology.
Sibongile Gumbi
iVacBio
Dr. Gumbi holds both a PhD and MBA, and is the founder and CEO of iVac Biotherapeutics, a vaccine manufacturing start-up. iVac uses the latest vaccine manufacturing technology in the form of plant-based expression systems to manufacture quality vaccines far quicker and cheaper than current vaccine production methods. The technology holds promise for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. She has held numerous posts in the area of technology and innovation management, including Group Executive, Biotechnology, then Executive, Innovation and Enabling Support at the Technology Innovation Agency; Intellectual Property and Commercialisation Manager, then R&D Outcomes Group Manager, at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research; and Manager, Business Development and Commercialisation at MRC.
Siraaj Adams
Iyeza Health
Siraaj has over 10 years’ experience in HIV disease management. He holds a pharmacy degree, MBA and MPH, and is a current board member of HIV Clinicians Society, SABCOHA and TB/HIV Care. He successfully launched the NDoH HIV Mobile App. Iyeza Health is primarily a logistics company that supports health systems currently in existence and strengthens and enhances health programme sustainability over time in local communities. It seeks to ensure seamless integration across the health services system in terms of drug prescription, review, dispensing, provision and delivery, including a fully-tracked health logistics service that allows people to monitor the delivery of their medicines door-to-door.
Sheraan Amod
RecoMed
Sheraan is serial technology entrepreneur, having previously founded the personalised publishing start-up Personera (later acquired by Impression Works LLC), the seed investment company Springlab, and RecoMed. RecoMed is an online healthcare marketplace and booking platform seamlessly connecting service providers and patients via medical schemes, insurance brokers, clinic groups and other channels. As CEO, he has steered the company to become the fastest growing health platform in Africa, with plans to launch in India in 2017. Having previously spent two years in with his start-up in New York, he eventually returned to South Africa. He is passionate about high growth opportunities in both developed and emerging markets.
Zukhanye Mayekiso
Geo-Q Technologies
Zukhanye is the founder and CEO of Geo-Q Technologies. After several years of years honing his skills in the industry with leading Geographic Information System (GIS) companies, he founded Geo-Q Technologies. His primary goal is to change how individuals and organisations visualise and interact with location-based intelligence to gain insights, improve efficiencies and decision-making. The intersection of geography, maps and technology has allowed him to combine his passion of business and location to build Geo-Q Technologies flagship product, Geo-Map.
