Jhpiego

Cultivating Innovation with WISH

We know that delivering innovation to those who need it most takes more than just a great product or compelling business model. WISH provides targeted support to innovators by tapping into Jhpiego’s people, know-how, and networks in more than 30 countries. We help innovators work within complex health systems to foster partnerships, generate local evidence, shift government policy, train health workers, and mobilize ministries and communities as part of their journey from idea to impact.

Our Approach

Targeted advisory services

From organizational strengthening and strategic partnerships to technical expertise, WISH works directly with innovators to respond to their individual needs.

We help the brightest minds respond to health emergencies. By working with The Trinity Challenge, we’re supporting innovations using data and analytics to strengthen how we predict, detect, and respond to pandemic threats and prevent development of antimicrobial resistance.
We connect innovators with the right expertise at the right time. In 2024, more than thirty Jhpiego experts from around the world shared their knowledge with innovators through masterclasses and mentorship spanning clinical, technical, strategic and operational domains.

Real-world demonstrations

With catalytic funding and in partnership with Jhpiego country offices, WISH helps innovators pioneer solutions in new markets.

We scale healthtech and AI in Africa. Through HealthTech Hub Africa, we channel seed funding to leading healthtech companies, enabling them to demonstrate their solutions in the public sector.

Strategic positioning & partnerships

WISH harnesses Jhpiego’s global presence, reputation and networks to elevate innovators, amplify their work and scale their solutions.

We connect innovators and decision-makers. We’ve profiled innovators at high-level events like the UN General Assembly and Africa HealthTech Summit and introduced them to new donors and partners.
We curate innovation showcases. We’ve designed and hosted both virtual and in-person showcases and marketplaces to elevate high-potential local solutions.
We support peer-to-peer learning. We broker connections between innovators facing similar challenges and cultivate a sense of community.

Policy, standards, and regulation

We observe the real-world experiences of innovators and use these insights to inform policy dialogues with governments for enabling policies, standards and regulations.

We convene an Intergovernmental Working Group with representation from 20 African countries to exchange peer experiences in healthtech and AI.
We host a Standards & Interoperability Lab to promote use of data standards and testing of solutions by healthtech innovators.
We disseminate a Policy Blueprint with targeted recommendations for governments to foster a thriving local healthtech innovation ecosystem.

Program Experts

Dr. Joanne Peter

Director of the Innovation Hub

Countries

Strengthening Decision-Making During Public Health Emergencies

Insights from a diverse group of innovators who were selected as winners of the inaugural Trinity Challenge on pandemic preparedness.

"Jhpiego's deep expertise in the sector brought a level of credibility beyond our internal discussions. We had several discussions regarding the current sector and challenges related to balancing the realities of government adoption and the pressure to achieve impact, scale, and revenue generation all simultaneously. These conversations really helped to more effectively articulate the challenges from a systemic rather than personal perspective. These insights have led to creative solutions to these challenges as we navigate growth."

— Wendy Leonard, TIP Global

The HealthTech Hub Africa is a pan-African healthtech innovation platform with a co-working and community space in Kigali, Rwanda implemented by Jhpiego in partnership with Villgro Africa and HELINA. It works to drive development of health technologies in Africa and fast-track these innovations in public health systems in collaboration with governments and investors. HealthTech Hub Africa companies participate in an immersive acceleration program, featuring investment readiness support, masterclasses, mentorship, and opportunities to test and validate their solutions in the public health system. Participating governments are supported to develop forward-looking policies and regulations informed by data, real-world experience and peer-learning.

Learn more.

The world needs bold thinking, meaningful collaboration, and committed action to better prepare for the next global health emergency. To safeguard lives and livelihoods, a coalition of partners created The Trinity Challenge, a call to action that asked the best and brightest minds to contribute ideas and innovations in data and analytics to better identify, respond to and recover from health emergencies like pandemics and AMR.

WISH is providing targeted support and award monitoring to the twelve winners of 2021 and 2024 Trinity Challenges by tapping into our global expertise and networks.

Learn more.

We’re providing venture advisory support to for-profit and nonprofit public health innovators working in community health, reproductive and maternal and child health, WASH and digital health under Grand Challenges Canada’s Transition to Scale and Stars in Global Health initiatives.

These innovators have been focusing on addressing critical challenges in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, but they need help accelerating their impact, scalability and sustainability. Along with our partners Villgro Africa and Adaptive Change Advisors we provide contextualized individual and group-based capacity building to help innovators build their organizational, business, leadership and scaling capacities.

Learn more.