Thank you

A couple of weeks ago I asked for your help.

Knowing that the world is facing a shortage of healthcare professionals, there has been increasing alarm and recognition of the seriousness of this issue and its consequences today and in the future.  What happens when you need medical attention, but it doesn’t arrive in time or doesn’t arrive at all?

At the same time, there is a growing population of displaced people in the world.  Geo-political destabilization, conflict, global warming, natural disasters and famine are all forcing people to flee for their lives.  The result is that is millions of people are disenfranchised, effectvely discarding the value they represent to society as well as their individual humanity.  It can’t be good to have 65 million people in the world abandoned and without hope.

Within those 65+ million people there are tens of thousands of skilled and trained healthcare professionals – doctors, nurses, physical therapists, aged care and child health specialists, medical technicians and more.  They cannot move forward as they have often lost all documentation of their credentials, somethings earned after years of education, internships and dedication. Often times the in-country accrediting organization is dysfunctional, if surviving, or has been destroyed.

So, a group of senior executives and innovators saw this as a challenge and an opportunity to make a difference and started an initiative to form a new organization that would re-credential these skilled healthcare workers.  Its technically daunting but made feasible through blockchain technology.  They spoke with key stakeholders such as the UNHCR and found growing support.  Based on this they entered the MIT Solve competition to get funded and attract further support.

This group includes Monique Morrow from The Humanized Internet; Frances Hughes, Franklin Schaffer and Peter Preziosi from CGFNS; Philip Reuchlin and Paola de Leo from The Andan Foundation and Daniel Gasteiger, Jon Alotscher and Patrick Grader and Adithya Pradeep Kuma from Procivis. I want to salute and congratulate them.

And I also want to thank you! I sent out a number of messages introducing this project and asked you to support them by voting for the project on the MIT Solve platform.  Many of you answered that call and voted.  Thus I want to thank you for your support - we are deeply grateful.  You won! 

In fact, we all won because when projects like this get the recognition and support they so rightly deserve, the world is a better place. Who knows, perhaps one day the person on the other end of that stethoscope will be a person you helped by supporting this program.

What a beautiful thing that would be.

#projecthelpyougrow #SolveFinals