Difference between revisions of "Team:MADRID UCM/Entrepreneurship"

Latest revision as of 00:49, 22 October 2019

Entrepreneurship

INDEX

1. Customer Discovery
2. Based on their interviews
3. Does the team present a convincing case that their product meets the customers' need?
4. Has the team demonstrated a minimum viable (MVP) product?
5 Does the team have a viable and understood business model/value proposition to take their company to market?

Social entrepreneurship is about prioritizing people over profit, and that is what we believe in. We aim to provide solutions for the most urgent global issues - in this case, the effects of water-borne diseases in low-income areas. To do this we want to connect our research to the real world, and learn from it

We want to dream, but we want our dreams to come true; for this, we have equipped ourselves with a broad set of multidisciplinary tools that allow us to respond to future users’ needs in an economically viable and sustainable way.
The incidence of cholera is persistent, with the number of cases and deaths every year consistently high, but we believe that everything can still be changed if we take into account local perspectives. By doing this, we can see that the goal of making the world a better place for everyone is actually reachable. And we are going to be part of it.

WHO

Learn more about the cholera health issue

Go!

1 Customer Discovery

Has the team interviewed a representative number of potential customers for the technology and clearly communicated what they learned?

The whole process of our Human Practices (Link a HP) shows how our team has carried out research on the ground in Cameroon, one of the most historically cholera-hit countries in the world. There, we performed ethnographic research that shed light on the relevance of our technology, giving us key insights into the matter.

Our project aims to go beyond the customer-seller relationship by placing us in a development cooperation partnership. Therefore, the final users (local health workers) are not the same as the institutions that will supply them by purchasing our product (Governments, NGOs, etc.). We have tried to address all different perspectives and have taken into account the feedback gathered from both health workers and institutions.
The final conclusions taken from our fieldwork are detailed in the Human Practices section mentioned above.

Human Practice

See our Integrated Human Practice here!

2 Based on their interviews

does the team have a clear hypothesis describing their customers’ needs?

A central feature of our project is the direct focus on the needs of the local population. Always keep this idea in mind, we listened to the principal stakeholders (link) and ran a number of workshops that allowed local people to try some of the most promising technologies in the health and diagnosis’ field, such as LAMP.

By listening to their opinions and reactions, we concluded that even when these cutting-edge technologies provide numerous improvements in comparison with traditional sensing methods (such as getting rid of the need for specialized equipment or refrigeration), they still leave some room for enhancement, as they have important shortcomings (the requirement of electricity, a high amount of false positives, not easy to use, etc.).

We developed our final sensor in order to apply our main technological element, aptamers, to solve the problems users found in the sensing methods that were tried during the workshops.

In addition, we have included local groups in the future development of the technology by establishing partnership agreements. Local people understand their interests better than any outsider, so we want to provide them with a platform to step up and take control over future improvements and research.

3 Does the team present a convincing case that their product meets the customers’ needs?

The iGEM deadlines did not allow us to make a complementary second fieldwork trip to test on the ground a functional prototype. Nonetheless, other ways have been taken.
We have reached a collaboration agreement with a local lab and transferred them all the knowledge generated during the development of the project. They will, in the near future, reproduce, test and characterize the technology that we have created.
Additionally, we have successfully built and tested in lab conditions our potentiostat sensor. The next phase will entail its testing on the ground (in Cameroon) with a cholera-sensitive electrode. After the end of the iGEM 2019 competition, our team will send five units of this potentiostat to our Cameroonian partners to continue with the trials.

Aptasensors

See our design of our potentiostate here!

The next phase will entail its testing on the ground (in Cameroon) with a cholera-sensitive electrode. After the end of the iGEM 2019 competition, our team will send five units of this potentiostat to our Cameroonian partners to continue with the trials.

4 Has the team demonstrated a minimum viable (MVP) product?

Our potentiostat is completely functional and has already performed many kinds of electrochemical measurements. While it is true that we still have not carried out trials with a cholera aptamer-conjugated sensor, we count on the effective protocol to conjugate aptamers into the electrode designed by the Madrid-OLM team of 2018; we are also able to take advantage of the existing aptamers designed for the cholera toxin, which we can use.

The technology described above is, therefore, halfway there for achieving the complete system that we propose, and it can already enter the phase of trials on the ground that will test both its viability in real conditions and its acceptance by final users.

And does the team have customers to commit (LOI, etc.) to purchasing it / using it?

We have created an extensive collaboration proposal for the implementation of our system that is detailed in the link below.
This proposal involves a number of actors, from the Ministry of Public Health of the Republic of Cameroon to local health workers, the final users of the sensor.

Integrated Human Practice

See our collaboration proposal here

5 Does the team have a viable and understood business model/value proposition to take their company to market?

Our implementation model diverges from the business one, as our main goal is not the creation of a market-based company. However, we have a proposal that will ensure the sustainability and viability of the project in the long run, leaving room for a profit margin that allows for RTD.
This entails an implementation plan and a collaboration agreement with the local institutions who lead health diagnoses in Cameroon.

We propose, then, a development cooperation project, with a large part of the funding coming from a number of international organizations that are dedicated to cholera diagnosis and treatment on the field. We have established contacts with some of these, such as Médecins Sans Frontières, the Pasteur Institute of Cameroon, the Global Task Force on Cholera Control and the African Institute of Open Science and Hardware.
These organizations have given us a realistic vision of the current and future challenges that we can encounter within the biosensing field, which our technology will face. They have also provided us with valuable insights into the necessary next steps for carrying out the change from current sensing methodologies to our technology.

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