Students channel business acumen and innovative thinking into solutions to global health challenges
Sep 06, 2024
Two teams of SFU Beedie undergraduate students applied their business skills to tackle a chronic global health issue in a virtual global case competition.
According to the World Health Organization, about 422 million people worldwide have diabetes, the majority (close to 80 per cent) live in low- and middle-income countries. The number of people with diabetes has nearly quadrupled since 1980 and the prevalence continues to increase, particularly in urban areas and amongst children and adolescents.
The APRU Virtual Global Health Case Competition, hosted by the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) challenged its member students to create technology-based solutions to address either individual- or systems-level barriers that contribute to low rates of adherence to diabetes treatment plans, mitigating the disease’s negative social and economic implications.
SFU Beedie students Gurjot Parmar and Minh Truong joined forces with SFU BSc (Biology) students Jasondeep Mann, Jagjit Dhillon and Mariam Hakimi to form GlucoWise Solutions to focus on adult diabetic Canadians. Over 20 people in Canada die daily from diabetes-related complications, with poor adherence to self-administered treatment and monitoring being a key challenge.
“Collaborating with science students who have an interest in health and medicine was amazing,” says Parmar. “We had a variety of unique perspectives and expertise.”
GlucoWise Solutions recommended a two-pronged solution: Ignite and Interact initiatives. Ignite explores gamification, a useful technique that can be leveraged for discipline and motivation. Interact explores artificial intelligence and motivational interviewing. They suggest both of these can be integrated into existing diabetes management technologies to increase adherence to treatment plans.
BBA students Rosa Chen, Irene Luo, Rachael Liji Varghese, Christina Vo, and Emmy Zhong, team Éblouissant, tailored their care solution to Indigenous communities in rural Canada that face disproportionately higher rates of diabetes compared to other population groups.
Team Éblouissant developed a proposal through HealthStart, an app to support diabetes treatment adherence by integrating real-time answers to diabetes-related questions, glucose monitoring systems, and gamification. HealthStart and its solutions follow the Model of Wholistic Health and Wellbeing developed by the Indigenous Primary Health Care Council. The model is centred on the belief that culture is treatment and healing.
The app would offer a virtual assistant, Daisy, to provide voice support and direct users to a telehealth extension. Both Western style endocrinologists and practitioners of traditional Indigenous medicine would be available to users. These features help mitigate language and cultural barriers to care, build trust, and improve engagement between care providers and Indigenous users.
“This was the first time I participated in a case competition that wasn’t strictly business focused,” says Varghese. “The intersectionality of this case competition, bringing business into the health space, is exciting and the research is enjoyable.”
Team Éblouissant also participated in the APRU Virtual Global Health Case Competition in 2023. They answered the challenge to create solutions for vulnerable migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers to navigate a local healthcare system in an Asia-Pacific region city. Their solutions for Afghan refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan earned them a third-place spot, out of 48 global entries.
“Because this case competition is virtual, it makes a global competition experience more accessible to students” says Truong. “It was a great opportunity to put my strategic business thinking and planning skills to the test, while also using my creative media arts skills to produce our final video submission.”
“Case competitions let you take your learning outside the classroom, look beyond, and see the reality of challenges in the world around us,” says Vo. “The health and non-profit sector need, and can benefit from, our business education and solutions.”
APRU Virtual Global Health Case Competition is an annual event. Teams have up to 12 weeks to prepare a video proposing a realistic, well-designed, innovative solution to a pressing global health challenge.
The competition culminates with finalists’ video presentations shared with global health practitioners, attendees and delegates at the annual APRU Global Health Conference.