All-Innovate: Hall teams join the idea competition boot camp

Last week, two teams led by members of St Edmund Hall were selected to take part in the boot camp stage of the All-Innovate competition (Oxford University’s first inter-college idea competition for the whole University). They joined 36 other teams from across 21 colleges.

Pengbo Qi (2017, DPhil in Engineering Science) was there with his CWater team who had come up with a state-of-the-art method of sewage treatment using chemical components, which has been proved to purify water successfully in a cheaper and faster way than traditional methods involving Graphene. Water pollution has become a major concern worldwide, especially in developing countries, and around 3.2 million children die each year because of unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation. In terms of the market, they planned to focus initially on India, with a vision of reducing the number of the population suffering from unhealthy water there to 20% in three years. Additionally, as their products can be recycled and reused, they would avoid secondary damage to the environment at the end of the product life.

Dr Grace Mzumara (2018, MSc International Health & Tropical Medicine) led the other Hall team, the Funsa (Ask-me) M-health consultancy. “In the NHS, a patient’s first point of contact is the general practitioner, a fully-qualified medical doctor, with specialist training, working in an efficient patient referral-information system,” she explained. “In developing countries like Malawi, the first point of contact may be a clinical officer, nurse or medical assistant in a rural health centre, with about two to three years of training. Junior doctors are based in one of the 28 district hospitals and challenged by not being supported by teams of specialists and registrars. The nearest consultants are up to six hours away in four referral hospitals, although certain specialty services are only available at one or two of these. One major problem with this system is that there is no efficient way for health workers to communicate with each other on patients’ needs through different levels of the system. Emergent cases are sent over with little or no communication to guide initial management, and non-emergent cases pay more in transport, long hospital stays and repeated tests for a specialist opinion.

“My idea to solve this problem is a mobile app, where all registered health workers can communicate directly with specialists within their region. Health workers can send a message, picture or call specialists they would not otherwise be aware of or have access to. Conversely, specialists can follow up care with patients’ primary health workers directly. The Oxford-based company ‘Consultant Connect’ offered to let my team use the app for Malawian health workers which greatly reduces the cost of developing an entirely new system, leaving mainly running and administrative costs. Consultant Connect is used in a similar way in the NHS and adheres to the NHS data protection laws for patient data. We ran a survey with Malawian doctors which revealed that doctors prefer apps that allow them to communicate among themselves, and have been in talks with the Society of Medical Doctors in Malawi which has expressed interest in piloting the app and assisting with the database of registered health workers to ensure security in its use.”

While neither of the two Teddy Hall teams were ultimately placed in the top ten, and therefore have not qualified for the final pitch evening, both had a very positive experience and learnt a lot through the competition.

“The experience of the All-Innovate idea competition was amazing!” said Pengbo. “In the boot camp, we were assigned a tutor who taught us how to do a perfect pitch and how to shape our PowerPoint, etc. Our tutor particularly liked our business idea, and encouraged us to apply for the patent and launch our product as soon as possible. We were shortlisted in the best 19 business idea during the day.

“The majority of our group members are DPhil students and participating in the competition enabled us to step out of the laboratory. It gave us a real sense of what the business world is. Most importantly, we learnt that the essence of doing research is to apply the results for the benefit of mankind.”

Grace added: “My teammate, Dr Priyanka Tripathy, and I interacted with amazing teams and learned about some awesome ideas that Oxford students have come up with. The structure of the day was to have one pitching and feedback session for each team in a cluster of teams, then a coaching session on pitching, followed by another pitching session. Only 10 teams would be chosen to pitch at the All-Innovate finals on 28 February at the Oxford Foundry.

“I learned a lot about pitching and will share a few lessons. Firstly, one must be aware of the reason for pitching. It may be to sell an idea, raise capital, and attract business partners or simply to get feedback. Whatever the reason, one must be engaging, compelling and relatable. One must be aware of the audience in question – since sets of audiences have different requirements of detail, tolerance of jargon, and intent of engagement in one’s venture. Lastly, when pitching, be yourself, tell your story confidently, be ready for questions and open to all feedback.

“Unfortunately, my idea did not make the final 10 to pitch at the All-Innovate contest. I got great feedback, including interest in my idea and that I made an excellent second pitch. I learned to clearly state the profit model for my company and got tips on how to involve more stakeholders. I pitched my idea as primarily non-profit with regards to understanding the paying power of my primary target, but, in retrospect, I have learned to explore all sources of possible revenue to support the idea. Moving forward, I will continue collaborating with Consultant Connect and the Malawi Society of Medical Doctors with the hope of improving communication and access to specialist medical knowledge and direction within the Malawian health system. I am grateful to St Edmund Hall for choosing me to represent the College, and to the Oxford-Weidenfeld and Hoffmann Leadership and Scholarship program for helping me develop my idea.”