By Catherine Jewell, former Senior Information Officer, WIPO
GIC Space is using proprietary medtech to bridge the healthcare gap in poor communities across its native Cameroon. As part of the World Health Organization’s Africa Innovators Network, its flagship project Gic Med provides affordable and accessible breast and cervical cancer screenings to people in rural communities. Founding director Conrad Tankou tells WIPO Magazine about the GIC Med model, why upskilling nurses is so important and how intellectual property (IP) has helped the company improve healthcare for women.
How is GIC Space improving cancer care for women in Cameroon?
GIC Space was established in 2019, about three years after we came up with the idea. It stands for Global Innovation and Creativity Space. We aim to bring together people with diverse backgrounds, skills and experiences, and a shared commitment to innovation to address social challenges. We have eight full-time staff and five part-time employees.
We offer breast and cervical cancer care to African women through our flagship project, GIC Med. This was inspired by my work in a community hospital in rural Cameroon. After diagnosing a woman with advanced cervical cancer and referring her for specialist treatment, I realized that too few rural women were screened for cancer – and that I had to do something about it.
I started by organizing cervical cancer screening campaigns in partnership with other doctors. But that was demanding and unsustainable. I’ve always loved technology and so brought a few friends together to develop a mobile app to lighten the load and facilitate the process. We then realized that breast cancer is more frequent than cervical cancer in Cameroon and started looking for and developing solutions that target both pathologies so we could make a bigger impact.
We have screened more than 15,000 women. We see up to 250 women per month.
We eventually developed five new technologies: a digital microscopy system, a smart speculum, a fine-needle biopsy adapter, a telemedicine platform and a user-friendly e-learning platform to train nurses using 3D simulations. These innovations support fast screening for and diagnosis of cervical and breast cancer for patients in remote areas. They are reliable and easy for community health workers to use, and cost-effective and locally available.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a visual inspection method for cervical cancer screening in developing countries. While there are other screening methods available, including pathologic diagnosis, Pap smear and HPV DNA testing, the visual inspection method is recommended in rural areas because it is low-cost and the required consumables are affordable.
How do you implement the GIC Med model within communities?
We found that the best way to implement our approach was to work within the existing health care system. We realized that if we wanted to reach every woman in every location, we needed to work with the health centers in every village. Our success also hinged on upgrading the skills of the nurses in those clinics. That’s why we developed our 3D simulation and interactive gamified e-learning platform, which offers them an easy learning option that is adapted to their circumstances.
By partnering with established health centers in rural areas, we also boost the levels of sociocultural acceptability of our technology in these communities. This approach also helps build patient confidence and trust, as the women are treated in familiar surroundings and by people they know.
How have women in local communities responded to your innovation?
So far our technologies, especially our smart speculum, have been highly accepted. The conventional speculum can be uncomfortable and painful, and often discourages women from screening. Our smart speculum solves that problem. It works like a speculum and colposcope and displays a magnified image of the cervix on a screen. We adapted the technology to have the image display on a smartphone, which attracted many rural women to the project. Interestingly, they wanted to see an image of their cervix but first it had to be screened. Evidently, it made them feel empowered. We also did a lot of work to simplify the technology so that low-skilled health workers could use it with minimal training. As a result, uptake has also been strong among the health care community.
What treatment technology do you use to prevent and manage cervical cancer?
Early detection and proper treatment can prevent cervical cancer. We use a portable and battery-operated thermal ablation device for treatment. We are working with the manufacturers and hope to strike a partnership deal with them. So far, we have screened more than 15,000 women through health and screening campaigns. We see up to 250 women per month in partnership with local health facilities. Additionally, we organize health campaigns to screen women in specific locations or villages. Each campaign lasts between three days and a week, attracting large crowds of 150 to 250 women per day.
What cervical cancer rates are you seeing?
The prevalence rate ranges from three to five percent. As we scale our operations, we will be able to gather more credible data on cancer in the developing world, which will help inform better healthcare policies.
Luckily, we did not expose our work. We realized that our technology was unique and needed protection but weren’t sure how to go about it.
Tell us about your business model.
Finding the right business model has been a challenge, especially since we are targeting vulnerable, low-income rural women. To ease that burden, we have partnered with health centers where we train nurses and supply the technologies and consumables for free. In return, we ask them to mobilize the women in the communities they serve to undergo screening for a minimal fee. This subsidy, however, does not apply in the cities where most women can afford to pay or have health insurance plans that cover these services. This is how we underwrite the subsidy for rural women.
How did you first learn about intellectual property and why is it important to your business?
When we started working on innovation, we were not familiar with intellectual property. Luckily, we did not expose our work. We realized that our technology was unique and needed protection but weren’t sure how to go about it. We had heard of cases where startups had failed because their ideas had been copied by bigger organizations. Luckily, I had a friend who was an IP lawyer. Thanks to him, I learnt a lot about IP, patents and the Patent Cooperation Treaty, which makes it easier to protect your inventions in multiple countries. With his help, we started filing patents and became increasingly motivated to develop other innovative solutions that we could protect. We soon came to appreciate the value of IP in building our credibility in the market.
We need to change the mindset that imported goods are superior to local products. IP protection can help build confidence in local solutions.
How many patents do you hold?
So far, we have secured four patents and are expecting one more.
How is GIC Space different from other incubators?
In a standard incubator, inventors come up with ideas and are then mentored on the development and commercialization of their inventions. But at GIC Space, we provide a space for inventors to collaborate and co-create solutions. We enable innovation by working together and learning from each other. With this approach, we pool diverse skills and talents to create bankable solutions as social entrepreneurs, and that makes us more effective too.
What is it like to be an innovator in the developing world?
We innovate to solve problems. We have very many opportunities to offer innovative solutions in the developing world. On the downside, it can be very challenging to access the resources and build the skilled teams we need to take our ideas forward. The biggest hindrance is the general lack of acceptance of local solutions, even when they are uniquely adapted to local conditions. We need to change the mindset that imported goods are superior to local products. In this regard, IP protection can help build confidence in local solutions, especially when they are protected internationally.
If you go public without first protecting your invention, anybody can exploit it.
What advice do you have for young innovators and entrepreneurs in Cameroon?
Young inventors and entrepreneurs need to act and they need to explore every angle. Never think less than you can imagine. And give value to what you create by protecting it. When you protect your invention, you can find the right partners to take it to the next level. You have the credibility and, based on that, you can create the right networks to really scale.
At what point should innovators take their ideas to the market?
Today, young people tend to get caught up in the dream of becoming a social media hero and are in a rush to reveal what they are doing. But if you go public without first protecting your invention, anybody can exploit it. Rushing to the market also denies them the opportunity to debug and improve their innovations, and that’s an inevitable part of the innovation process.
Educating young people about IP will help them make the right IP choices going forward.
Why is IP important to GIC Med?
IP is important to us because we want to scale our technology and ensure it reaches every country in Sub-Saharan Africa where it is needed. We want to leverage our solutions to create more impact and IP helps us do that. Ownership of our IP gives us greater control over our strategic direction, how we scale and who we partner with.
But the IP system needs to be more accessible. That is key to enabling young people to inform themselves about intellectual property and understand how it can support their ambitions. It’s also important for IP offices to make it easier for young innovators to protect their innovations. The situation is improving but a lot more can still be done to make the system more accessible.
It’s tough when you are starting out and you need USD$1,000 to build your first prototype and another USD$1,000 to file your patent application. Educating young inventors and entrepreneurs about IP and providing them with the information they need to navigate the IP system, while making it easier for them to protect their inventions, will help them make the right IP choices going forward.
How can WIPO support young innovators and entrepreneurs?
WIPO has a key role to play and is already doing great work to inspire young innovators. WIPO’s commitment to young people offers valuable opportunities for the Organization to further extend its influence, especially in regions where IP awareness levels are low. The challenge is to make IP attractive to young people. That requires creative engagement, so they really understand what they can gain from IP and how using the IP system can help them advance their own goals.
Have you considered integrating AI into your technology?
That will be our next step. Once we scale our solutions and have sufficient data, we will be able to build an AI diagnostic system to optimize our solutions and help pathologists handle their heavy caseload by improving workflows.
What are your plans going forward?
Our priority is to scale our innovations through partnerships to increase our social impact by tackling breast and cervical cancer rates in rural communities. We also want to use the data we gather in this process to influence policy and promote universal access to quality health care. We’re also planning to use our technology to target other conditions, like prostate cancer.
