Scott Anderson

NexThought Monday: It?s a Small World by Design- Let?s Make it a Healthy One

VisionSpring, which provides affordable eye glasses to thousands of low-income people around the world, is partnering with Ray-Ban on a campaign to raise at least $250,000. That’s enough to supply 65,000 people without sight with the eyeglasses they need to help them lead productive lives.

Those who donate $160 or more from March 11-April 11 via the campaign will receive a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses for free. (Over the weekend, VisionSpring was slated to appear on Good Morning America as part of ABC’s ’Be the Change, Save a Life’ project, however, all coverage is justifiably being dedicated to the earthquake/tsunami devastation in Japan).

Other reason I bring up VisionSpring is because of its past involvement with design firm IDEO, which last week announced the launch of IDEO.org, a new nonprofit arm to work directly with NGOs, fledgling businesses and investors to spread human-centered design principles. My Q&A with its leaders is here. The connections between design, development and the investment community seem to be growing thicker and deeper. Aaron Hurst, of the Taproot Foundation, last week pointed out several other examples of design firms setting up nonprofit arms to help create more effective social businesses.

Similarly (and please excuse the rather awkward segue) the fulcrum of design -both of technology and of health-related programs – was an ongoing theme throughout our Healthcare Delivery With the BoP series. We wanted to re-publish these 14-post series in a way that was easily readable and sharable. So, we’re posting the series in a Scribd document below.

Additionally, the full transcript of last month’s Twitter chat on the series, hosted by Ashoka, is available here. The Center for Health Market Innovations, which also contributed several very valuable posts to the series, provided an excellent recap of the chat here as well.

Thank you to Ashoka, CHMI and of course, our dedicated team of writers, for putting together a great series.

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Healthcare Series

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