Gonzalo Wartjes, Global Director of Growth & Partnerships at Movement Health, outlines why joining our mission is such an exciting and unique proposition.
Transforming healthcare systems around the world is a formidable challenge. However, it’s not just a challenge for governments or the private sector—it involves all of us.
The team behind Movement Health has been at the forefront of healthcare needs for many years. It knows that building sustainable systems requires input from all sectors of the economy, so we can learn from their efficiencies, innovations and transformations.
That’s why I believe its mission is so important. It’s only by working with like-minded people and organisations that we can achieve the changes that are so vital for the future.
The benefits of partnering
To be a part of Movement Health is to have a front-row seat on the latest healthcare innovations, technologies and developments. More specifically, there are six key benefits:
Knowledge: Our partners are closely involved in expert discussions around specific healthcare challenges, with the chance to contribute and learn from the insights generated.
Impact: Our partners are pivotal in transforming agreed challenges into practical improvements on the ground across the world.
Network: Our partners are part of a global network of world-leading health authorities, sharing insights in a way that drives equal access to innovation.
Access: Our partners engage with some of the brightest minds in the sector and cutting-edge innovation companies—those who lead the course of health-innovation implementation by setting the frameworks or implementing it at large scale.
Data: Our partners have access to data generated by each demonstration. These insights are used to further solutions and confront shared healthcare challenges across borders.
Growth: During a period of rising demand within the healthcare sector our partners may find new ways to answer them with opportunities arising from collaboration.
As a joining global partner, you will shape the future of healthcare as we know it. Your skills and expertise will guide Movement Health’s direction. As a result, people in the countries that matter to you will have better health outcomes within a shorter time frame.
Defining the proposition
However, it’s important to emphasise that partnering with us is a unique proposition. And before we define what we are, it’s vital to understand what we’re not.
Movement Health is not about selling products or services. It’s not a philanthropic initiative either, such as a charitable donation to a cause.
It’s understandable for organisations to see partnerships as a platform to increase their profits and market share. However, a partnership with Movement Health offers a long-term commitment with long-term systemic benefits.
Therefore, Movement Health has two parallel approaches.
The first approach involves extrapolating interventions with proven impact to deal with systemic problems we find in health systems elsewhere. These solutions come from innovative start-ups and businesses, based on the matching needs.
The second approach involves working on broader systemic developments to global healthcare systems. This involves engagement with policymakers and key stakeholders to adopt the approaches necessary to build resilient systems for the future.
Here’s the point: we always need to keep the second approach in mind if we’re going to see a lasting benefit from the first. There’s no point in developing a new healthcare technology, for example, if it doesn’t have the proper framework or setting in which to grow.
Understanding the whole
We all want to do the best work we can. But it’s easy to fall into a situation where experts are working hard on multiple initiatives without reference to other partners who could give them a broader and deeper perspective. Instead, when looking for solutions, they take their cues from elsewhere.
However good the intention, short-term solutions often have negative unintended consequences if they aren’t linked to long-term systemic change. That’s why we want all our partners to play a meaningful role at the systemic level. The mindset needs to be: we are working together and learning from each other to improve the system.
In effect, we want to build a health ecosystem. As this article points out, this involves “a dynamic group of largely independent partners working together to deliver integrated products or services”.
Imagine a fly sitting on the tail of an elephant. The fly might be so focused on the tail—or even just a tiny part of the tail—that it doesn’t realise it’s sitting on an elephant in the first place. Only by zooming out will it be able to see the whole animal.
At Movement Health, we need to keep the ‘whole animal’ in view. That means understanding the systemic changes needed in global health systems, the cooperation needed to achieve those changes, and the role individual organisations can play.
We can only get the results we need through interconnected changes aimed at sustainable improvements. Professor Rifat Atun of Harvard University points out that 80% of healthcare investment is allocated to fixed costs, such as hospitals. Budgets are designed to perpetuate existing business models, while only 20% goes towards innovative services and products. This needs to change.
Scalability is our focus
When it comes to sustainable healthcare solutions, we also understand that scalability has a significant impact on our interventions. So we always keep the following principles in mind:
- Defining the scope of the solution with the user and impact to be measured.
- Working from the start with the major local implementers.
- Ensuring that we quickly identify and prevent contextual risks that may hinder the solution.
- Building an economic model based on major health adopters’ possibilities to ensure the solution’s viability.
- Mapping the value chain and critical user factors that might ensure sustainability and capacity to scale beyond, using the expertise of a) corporations used to scalability and b) local experts familiar with the context.
We started in Latin America in 2020 fostering cross-country scalability, leveraging the synergies of a region where one language is primarily spoken. Just to name one case, we have implemented a solution in 91 healthcare centres in Peru, which benefited 500,000 citizens.
We also connected three interoperable platforms in Chile via a public-private partnership between Movement Health, the National Thorax Institute (INT) and the National Centre for Health Information Systems (CENS). This facilitated data exchange and increased the efficiency of clinical and administrative processes. It is now being deployed in Ecuador, where it may become a standard for interoperability, benefiting 17.8 million citizens.
National and cross-border scalability has significant impacts on healthcare efficacy, cost of delivery and the resulting improvement in patient experience. With the backdrop of collective learning and experience, our guiding principles remain simple: collaboration, innovation and sustainable delivery.
It’s important to remember that countries share around 80% of the same healthcare challenges, so it makes sense to listen and learn from each other!
Forging a collective commitment
That’s why, in seeking partners for our mission, Movement Health wants to build a coalition of all the talents.
By bringing together complementary stakeholders, we can identify solutions to the challenges of global healthcare from multiple perspectives while sharing learnings, collaborating on outcomes and benefitting from each other’s expertise.
Only in that way can we transform the systems that are failing to provide the healthcare people need. As the world catches up to the urgency of the healthcare crisis, we hope to emerge as pathfinders.
The world needs our collective commitment. And we need you to play a part in it.
To further understand how your industry can help Movement Health and get involved, please get in touch with Gonzalo Wartjes at gonzalo.w@movementhealth2030.com