Kijenzi is a tech startup with humanitarian concern. Recently, their objective was to provide 3D printers to clinics in more distant areas of Kenya, with co-founders John K. Gershenson (also director of the Penn State Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship (HESE) program), Benjamin Savonen (doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering), and other students all working together on the international 3D printing project. As they delved further into the real issues with obtaining medical equipment in Kenya, however, the team realized that what was necessary was for medical teams at Kenyan clinics to have access to CAD files so they could fabricate equipment on their own.
Overcoming obstacles in the medical supply chain is key to providing better care to patients in Kenya, but this central focus wasn’t pinpointed until the Kijenzi team was actually in the midst of their initial idea to provide a ‘moveable 3D printer,’ meant to travel from clinic to clinic and product necessary parts. Giving the clinics the latitude to work with files from a cloud-based system opened up a completely new realm of self-sustainability in production.
“Our customers are health care facilities that don’t have access to the supply chains they need and over 40 percent don’t have the equipment needed to treat their patients. We bring the ability to locally manufacture what they need, when they need it. That is a game changer for access to treatment,” said Gershenson.
Kijenzi was born out of the Penn State Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship program (HESE) meant to propel both students and faculty into dreaming up new solutions in the tech sector that will help the world—and mainly in lower-income regions—with solid new business models that may not have been possible before without innovation such as 3D printing. Kijenzi then evolved and expanded further while the founders participated in the Ben Franklin Technology Center’s TechCelerator program, a partnership with Invent Penn State that lasts ten weeks and includes multiple sessions with mentors, along with educational seminars regarding subjects like creating a business model, finances, creating intellectual property, and more.
“The TechCelerator gave us the time and feedback we needed to craft the story of Kijenzi in such a way that everyone could understand what we are doing,” said Gershenson.
The team also came in second place in the IdeaMakers Challenge with their proposed plans for Kijenzi in Africa. After that, they competed in the Penn State’s 2018 Smeal College of Business Supply Chain Pitch Contest, winning first place, and a cash award of $6,000.
Their new system for encouraging 3D printing and an improved medical supply chain has the potential to reach far beyond just the Kenya project, launching this May. They say that currently they have requests for 400 different parts in their system, and while medicine is a central focus, their concepts can be helpful to many other applications also. Find out more about Kijenzi in the video below, as well as checking out some of the other stories we have followed around the world as innovators have worked to design devices like 3D printed prosthetics for use in developing countries, 3D printed microscope attachments for field diagnostics, and even 3D printed devices for measuring water quality.
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[Source: Penn State]