Credit: Alessio Soggetti/Unsplash

Designing and scaling innovation

We use a systems approach to enable promising global health innovations to achieve sustainable scale. We use evidence, political economy analysis, diverse partnerships, policy shifts and economic arguments to position innovations to achieve social and commercial impact.

Our approach involves:

  • Designing for scale from the outset
  • Anticipating and proactively navigating systemic resistance
  • Bringing diverse partners to the table to create the right environment for adoption, investment, and long-term success

We drive innovation in three complementary ways:

1) Create: identifying and generating innovations, developing the technical thinking and taking them to market with investors and partners

Example: Flying medicines over mountains in Nepal.  We are working with technology partners to support the Nepal Government in embedding drones into the health system to deliver lifesaving medicines and vaccines to women and children living in remote areas.

2) Advise: providing technical support to innovators from initial concept to sustainable scale

Example: Supporting innovators on their scaling journey:  We work with 40 global innovators across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas to design, pilot and scale cutting edge innovations and technologies to improve access to safe abortion services, information and products

3) Steward: combining fund management and technical support to enable innovators to deliver impactful results  

Example:  Revolutionising access to health services through innovations: We supported the testing and scaling of 19 maternal and newborn health innovations in Kenya. Each innovation received a grant ranging from £250,000 - £1million to support their refinement and transition from pilot to scalable scale.

Our Department for Design and Innovation is a multi-disciplinary team made up of public health, communications and new business development experts. We engage with the latest evidence, investors and organisations in global health innovation, scanning the horizon for new opportunities and partnerships.

Want to know more, or invest in our innovations?

Contact Sara Bandali, Director of Design and Innovation for some intriguing lightbulb discussions.

For more information:

Our experts

  • Joanne Hemmings, PhD
    Joanne provides technical expertise across sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender, research and evaluation, social and behaviour change, and business and strategy development. She’s currently supporting programming to end female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and to support girls’ choices to reduce unsafe abortion.
  • Sara Bandali, DrPH
    Sara uses her expertise in designing, implementing, measuring and overseeing programmes and innovations to improve health outcomes for women and children. She leads Options’ work accelerating the sustainable scale of promising global health solutions. A Doctor of Public Health, Sara brings her ability to harness strategy development analytics, adaptive and design methodologies and business growth to bring innovation to existing and new markets.
  • Kenneth Macharia
    Kenneth has over 21 years’ international experience designing programmes, developing and executing effective business strategies for revenue and market share growth in the UK and Africa. Kenneth is part of the Kenya Programme Management team, supporting the Director of Programmes with strategic planning and programme quality assurance. He drives strategic growth for Options in Kenya and the wider region.
  • Amina Ahmad-Shehu
    Amina is a public health expert with over 25 years’ experience working in complex, low-resource settings in the government and non-governmental sectors providing leadership and technical support to ensure the delivery of quality health and development services. She is focused on building a solid platform for er team and their various programmes, to meaningfully contribute to the development and strengthening of Nigeria’s health system.

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