Murielle Tiambo: Quality healthcare for the underserved
This week, the TTI Interview Series covers our network member Murielle Tiambo. Murielle is the co-founder of KimboCare, whose mission is to expand access to quality healthcare to those underserved. Murielle and her co-founder Franck Tiambo strive to bring more humanity and transparency into the way healthcare is accessed and delivered.
In this interview, Murielle talks about leveraging its end-to-end digital platform to drive transparency in healthcare.
Achieving impact through value-based care services
Murielle, tell us about how your work intersects with the impact space.
KimboCare enables anyone to purchase value-based care services at thoroughly vetted medical partners for people who cannot afford it, leveraging its end-to-end digital platform to drive transparency.
We believe that if givers are provided with a transparent platform which shows that their contributions are used for the intended purpose and directly improve the health of patients, these givers will have higher trust that their gift will be beneficial and will continuously choose to utilize the platform and increase their donations. More giving through KimboCare empowers populations in vulnerable communities to have steadier access to essential care, gradually advancing health equities around the globe.
What is your own definition of impact?
Impact is a measurable positive change on people’s lives.
Using resources more effectively and more ecologically
Murielle, what do you see as the most important issue to address in the next 10 years?
Alignment between population growth rate and available resources on our planet. There are mathematical reasons why people have started working on a move to Mars. We need to do more on that end - either 60-80% of the population doesn’t make it and we need to use our resources more effectively and more ecologically, or we have to colonize other planets. Can we achieve systemic discipline to use our planet’s resources more economically to restore and preserve the planet to where it needs to be? If not, then Mars may well be the way forward and how exactly we make it happen will need to be figured out soon.
Regulation that is enforceable over multiple “territories”
What is the greatest challenge you face to scale your impact?
A few challenges come to mind, such as lack of medical structures, financial disparities hindering people’s ability to afford basic care and a lack of regulation that is enforceable over multiple “territories”, especially when it relates to Europe vs. USA preventing ability to aggregate patient data in most cost-effective technologies.
A world in which no one has to worry about access to quality care
Murielle, what is your long-term vision and how do you measure & quantify your impact?
Our vision is a world in which no one has to worry about access to quality care. We recognize that our efforts to advance healthcare access for financially vulnerable people around the world align with goals of many other global organizations striving to do good, and to account for this, we have aligned our metrics with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) where possible to ensure our innovation is a key enabler of the UN mission to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.
Our metrics include: 1. “Number of patients using KimboCare platform” promoting “Health & Well-Being, SDG3” 2. “Patient’s rating of perceived experience”, indicator of lasting adoption of our service and education programs on preventive care promoting "Quality Education, SDG4" 3. Average expense by episode of care, promoting “No Poverty, SDG1”.
Embedding strategical quantitative and qualitative measures
What are some misconceptions you’ve noticed regarding what “impact” is all about?
People tend to think of impact as actions versus effective outcomes of their actions on the end user. By bringing the end user at the center of actions, we are more likely to design and implement efforts that eventually create true lasting impact on the lives of people impacted. This leads to the importance of community participation in creating change, because we worked with our buying customers, patients and medical partners for 6-9 months to collect insights on ways our solution could serve them best. We then leveraged those insights to develop our technology platform which allows anyone to purchase quality medical care for people who cannot afford it.
Another misconception is the tendency to want to measure impact quantitatively first. Understandable, but we often miss the little progress when we don't strategically embed quantitative and qualitative measures. For example - the number of patients treated per month may indicate how successful we are at attracting new patients to use our services, but the rating of their perceived experience tells more about their sentiment and their ability to adopt KimboCare in a lasting way. After all, a patient that feels welcomed and understood is half way treated.
