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[[Rexford Widmer - Marketing Leader, Rural Health]]
[Hello, my name is Rex Widmer, ]
[and I'm the marketing leader for Rural Health and Healthcare Systems.]
[And I'm here at the Grameen Bank in Dhaka, Bangladesh]
[which, as you know, is the leading institution in microcredit ]
[that started the revolution to bring financial services to the poor.]
[About a decade ago, the Grameen Bank expanded their scope]
[ into the healthcare space, forming Grameen Kalyan, or Village Health, ]
[and this is the group which GE Healthcare is now partnered with.]
[Essentially, the scope of our work is to transform maternal and child health outcomes]
[in rural communities in Bangladesh,]
[doing that with innovative, new technologies that can change the way that]
[maternal and child health is delivered for rural communities.]
[One of the key challenges is really the lack of doctors in the rural community, ]
[and so the focus of our efforts, while we are a technology company, ]
[is really about empowering the paraprofessionals--]
[the nurses, the EMTs, or emergency medical technicians, and the paramedics--]
[to use the technology and be able to bring the care to averse women in the rural community.]
[So what we're doing today, we have trained eight paramedics ]
[on how to use the LOGIQ Book XP.]
[They went through a week of training.]
[None of the eight paramedics had ever even used a computer before, ]
[much less a medical technology.]
[And out of that week's training, they actually were very competent with the system, ]
[they were able to perform clinical scans accurately, ]
[detecting everything from placenta previa to ectopic pregnancy,]
[those causes of maternal death which are so prevalent in rural communities.]
[So, at this stage, we're funding the training for these paraprofessionals, ]
[and we'll go through an interactive R&D cycle, ]
[moving from the LOGIQ Book XP to the Venue 40,]
[the new platform that the performance technologies business has created,]
[and over the course of the next two years, continue to refine a new prototype,]
[one that's rugged, reliable, very low cost, battery-based, ultra portable,]
[dust proof, drop resistant; basically suited particularly for the rural environment,]
[and then, lastly, very easy to use, such that this paraprofessional staff can]
[learn quickly and adapt to that technology.]
[So we see this partnership as a critical one in our growth in the rural health space.]
[As you know, that's really the final frontier for our business, ]
[and Grameen has taken a very entrepreneurial approach to exploring these new innovations]
[and adapting new clinical models to extend reach to those who need it.]
[So very exciting work, and we look forward to sharing more with all of you]
