SOCIAL VENTURES
and track 200,000 people in the Wolaita zone in south-east Ethiopia to monitor how they are responding to particular kinds of treatment. Christine says the team is also looking at other biometric methods, such as palm or facial recognition. “Fingerprints can be hard to scan if they’re scarred or damaged,” she explains. “But there is an issue of acceptance; people are used to giving their fingerprint, and in some places will use it to sign documents. “Facial recognition is a lot newer as a biometric modality, and clearly it could be a problem in Muslim countries where a lot of people have their faces covered and might not be comfortable uncovering them,” she points out. “We’re a non-profit, and the way we generate revenue is to work with our
A project emerging from a one-day hackathon, it soon caught the eye of Bill and Melinda Gates, who awarded the fledgling company $250,000"
partners, so we’re exploring different modalities that might work well in different situations. We started off with fingerprints, because we believe that’s a good solution to provide direct access to data in real time. But our goal is always to find the way to make the most effective impact.” Simprints was founded in 2013 by a trio of Cambridge University Gates scholars: Alexandra Grigore, Toby Norman and Daniel Storisteanu, along with Tristram Norman, who attended Royal Holloway, University of London. Starting life as a project emerging from a one-day hackathon run by leading mobile healthcare NGO MedicMobile, it soon caught the eye of Bill and Melinda Gates, who awarded the fledgling company $250,000 through their foundation’s Saving Lives at Birth competition in 2015. A further award of $2m from the Gates Foundation followed in 2017 to support BRAC, a project Simprints is working on in Bangladesh focusing on improving
care for pregnant women living in the slums of Dhaka. It has already helped over 28,000 mothers, and aims to reach 2.1 million mothers and children with critical maternal, newborn and child healthcare services by 2021. Simprints has grown considerably in recent years, and now occupies offices at Cambridge Science Park. Christine, who joined the company in 2017, says the Cambridge ecosystem has been key to the company’s growth. “Three of the four co-founders met at the university, and the help and advice we’ve had, as well as the support to find offices, has been amazing. It’s a great place to be, both personally and professionally. Simprints wouldn’t be where it is today without the support we’ve had from the Cambridge community at every step of our journey.” Find out more at simprints.com
IMAGES Although Simprints is also exploring facial recognition, fingerprints are the most widely accepted form of biometric authentication
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