Social Entrepreneur: Conscious Companies | Benefit Corporations | Impact Investing

The founders of Noora Health utilized design thinking to iterate their way to dramatically improved patient outcomes. It started at Stanford University’s dSchool. When Katy Ashe was an engineering student at Stanford University, she was anxious to find ways to apply her skills. She signed up the d.School’s “Design for Extreme Affordability” class. There she met Edith Elliott. Edith had a background in international policy. They were paired with medical students Shahed Alam and Jessie Liu. Together they were assigned a group of cardiac hospitals in Bangalore. When the team visited the hospitals, they were confronted by a system stretched to the limits by demand. The hospital staff was stretched, and requested that the team focus on improving the flow of patients through the system. However, by “living a day in the life” of the stakeholders – from the CEO to the janitors, to the patients and their families, they noticed an unusual pattern. Yes, the hospital staff was overwhelmed, however, there standing in the