I was one of five IBM employees selected to work on a 3-week design project with the Harvard Medical School in Boston. Part of the IBM Health Corps program, our IBM team partnered with The Harvard Global Health Catalyst to envision a strategy to reduce the cancer burden. Through design thinking exercises, over 20 interviews with health professionals, we developed a strategy to improve cervical cancer screening in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In Sub-Saharan African countries, cancer is significantly more deadly than in other countries with more developed healthcare infrastructures. There are approximately 626,000 new cases of cancer per year. 448,000 individuals die of cancer every year (American Cancer Society 2014).