From making SPICE officially open source to expanding our geographical reach, 2023 was an exciting year of growth for Medtronic LABS. The story of 2023 is one of scale – with patients at the center.
We’re working in more counties and countries than ever – including launching our first program in the United States. We also scaled our existing work in Kenya and Sierra Leone through expanded partnerships with NovoNordisk, World Diabetes Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
We’re focused on scaling sustainably, which includes expanding our work with Ministries of Health and addressing global health issues like disease verticals and digital fragmentation.
Verticalization by disease has created significant gaps in patient care at the primary care level. This year, we expanded past hypertension and diabetes to break down these verticals and address the full spectrum of community health needs from hypertension and diabetes to mental health, malaria, TB, HIV, maternal health, and more.
Leveraging our work in the non-communicable disease (NCD) space, we are building the next generation of data-driven integrated primary care applications with a focus on improved outcomes.
And we’re building stronger cross-sector partnerships to ensure we are part of creating the digital public infrastructure (DPI) that’s required for true global health system transformation.
Here are just a few milestones from the past year.
Becoming open source
SPICE is not just technology – it’s a holistic approach to healthcare delivery. We go beyond the commonly used data collection tools to ensure that all community-based activities are bi-directionally linked to the health system.
And this year, we officially became open-source – a significant milestone for both LABS and the rapidly evolving global healthcare landscape.
We made SPICE open source primarily to scale its impact by enabling broader accessibility and collaboration and ensuring that government and health system partners could deploy the platform as a long-term solution.
We were also named a Digital Public Good (DPG) by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), a multi-stakeholder United Nations-endorsed initiative that promotes better collaboration among development partners and reduce barriers to the digitization of health systems.
Cutting through the AI hype
In the current flurry of AI hype and predictions of doom, it’s easy to get lost in the chatter rather than actioning efforts for this technology to have a real-world impact on people’s lives. We’re cutting through the hype by working directly with health systems and governments in Kenya, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Rwanda, and the U.S. to apply cutting-edge technology to measurably improve health outcomes for the world’s most underserved communities.
Our teams are learning from the health data we collect by leveraging AI in practical and effective ways to improve our SPICE platform and community-based programs. And through partnerships with organizations like the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, we continue to improve our AI acumen.
Bridging the hearing gap in Bhutan
We joined forces with the Ministry of Health, Royal Government of Bhutan, ADA, The United Nations Technology Bank (UNTB), MED-EL, and others to revolutionize pediatric ear and hearing care in Bhutan through our Hear, Listen, and Speak program.
Since the start of 2022, Hear, Listen, and Speak has helped more than 70,000 children and youth get screened for hearing loss – and it’s just the beginning.
Embracing what it means to be global
We view global health as truly global. That’s why we launched our programs in the U.S. to address the deeply entrenched health inequity that persists in many communities.
Our Healthy Neighbor program in South Jersey hit the ground running this year, and we’ve already started seeing an impact.
“We’re adapting the models we’re scaling across Africa and Asia to the U.S. through Healthy Neighbor,” said Head of U.S. Programs, Lauren Leccese. “This is an exciting opportunity to innovate with learnings from global community health solutions and local partners.”
Looking ahead
Our list of partners and collaborators is always growing. From governments and multinational corporations to community-based organizations and global NGOs, we build cross-sector partnerships, because we can’t do this alone. Join us on the journey toward global healthcare transformation.
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