From left to right: Danial Betres, Victoria Li and Jon Dhanapala
A health technology startup from the GreenHouse social impact incubator at St. Paul’s University College at the University of Waterloo has been awarded a grant from the Clinton Foundation’s COVID-19 Student Action Fund.
Their cloud-based medical-record system, Emre, seeks to support medical professionals in providing high-quality healthcare to displacement and refugee camps in developing nations. Danial Betres, Victoria Li and Jon Dhanapala rose above 1,400 other applicants to win one of 38 grants. All three are alumni of management engineering at Waterloo who were made aware of the fund opportunity through their biweekly mentorship from GreenHouse.
“We have really enjoyed becoming part of the GreenHouse community since we started to build our prototype in January,” said Jon Dhanapala, Emre co-founder. “They’re a great resource and have been instrumental in helping us make good connections to launch our product.”
Through the fund, Emre was able to secure seed funding and has the opportunity to participate in the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) 2021 program, including an invitation to attend the CGI U annual event at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland from April 9 to 11, 2021.
“We're happy that our work has been acknowledged by such a reputable organization,” said Dhanapala. “It’s very exciting to have the opportunity to really get our idea off the ground with its support.”
Emre started as a capstone design project last July. But since then, COVID-19 has really shed light on how important it is to have the appropriate technology at the front lines of the healthcare system.
“Unreliable health care record-keeping plagues a vast majority of displacement and refugee camps, making it difficult to gain an understanding of the health state of an individual or population,” said Dhanapala. “We aim to help solve this issue.”
Emre plans to use the funding to help with travel and software expenses to pilot the system in a medical clinic within an Iraqi displacement camp.