Shifo Founder and Director Rustam Nabiev appointed an Ashoka Fellow

Ashoka, the world's largest global network of social entrepreneurs, is an international organisation with the mission "to shape a global, entrepreneurial, competitive citizen sector: one that allows social entrepreneurs to thrive and enables the world's citizens to think and act as changemakers". As an Ashoka Fellow, Rustam now joins a global group of leading social entrepreneurs who have been recognised for their innovative solutions to social problems and their potential to change patterns across society.

Ashoka conducts a thorough process to identify social entrepreneurs to the global network. Candidates are tested for several months against criteria that measure community impact, creativity and ethical values. Ashoka's network includes social entrepreneurs from 89 countries, as well as supporters from the private sector who contribute strategic support and open doors.

"An Ashoka Fellow is a social entrepreneur with the potential to solve social problems in the first place, both nationally and internationally. Rustam Nabiev is such a person. Now we will work together to link Rustam Nabiev and Shifo to Ashoka's international network, so that more families and caregivers can benefit from the solution. Rustam has distinguished himself as an entrepreneur with a tireless commitment to the health of children throughout the world. He has developed a unique way to ensure that both parents, health systems and policy makers can ensure good health for their children through vaccines and improved knowledge. Ashoka is keen to support pioneers who put their ideas into practice and create a better world. Rustam is one of them. We also have a shared ambition to inspire more to act as change agents themselves, in their own lives and in the society around them", says Maja Frankel, director of Ashoka Scandinavia.

After learning about eHealth and the opportunities of telemedicine from his studies in mobile infrastructure, Rustam wrote his thesis on the subject in 2002, and developed an IT system to monitor the at-home equipment of 20,000 people with chronic conditions. At Karolinska University Hospital and Karolinska Institutet he worked in a global context managing eHealth projects that strengthened health service delivery in Sweden, Europe, Asia and Africa, and evaluated eHealth tools that increased efficiency and accountability in home health and facility-based service delivery.

This led to a key insight: could innovations from the Swedish public health care system be applied to improve systems in under-resourced contexts? A decade later, he decided to devote his life to tackle the global health issue of children dying from preventable diseases through Shifo, which he co-founded.

In 2009, Rustam was part of a delegation invited to Uganda to understand how eHealth can improve healthcare in an African context. During this time, he came to understand the root causes of the problems with delivering preventive health care services for children, and possible ways to fill these gaps. Following his time in Uganda, Rustam began working on developing Shifo and after several months, resigned from his position at Karolinska and pursued his journey full time with Shifo.

Rustam founded Shifo with a mission to use the power of data and technology to drive improvements in health care delivery, accountability, and transparency to reach the vision of no children dying from preventable diseases. According to Rustam Nabiev,

"Since the inception of Shifo up to now, we learned the needs from the field, what kind of problems to solve, and developed MyChild System that can address those needs in a sustainable way. Together with Ashoka we will learn how to scale MyChild System, so that it can bring value to as many newborn children as possible. We are humbled and honoured to be part of the Ashoka network and join hands together to reach a day when no child dies or suffers from preventable diseases".

Shifo’s approach is to unite and create trustworthy relationships between key actors to solve the gaps stopping us from reaching every child. Shifo has worked strategically to achieve full uptake of the MyChild system in 25 countries by 2020 to reach 20 million children, and to date, MyChild system has been introduced to Uganda, Gambia and Afghanistan. To keep up with the pace set out by the new SDGs, with the goal to end all preventative deaths among children, Rustam’s ambition is to reach out to 1 billion children by 2030.

Learn more about Rustam's journey here and in this interview with Ashoka 

About Ashoka

Ashoka is the world's largest organisation for social entrepreneurship and change making. We find and support people with new, smart solutions to major social problems. For over 35 years we have selected over 3,300 so-called Ashoka Fellows and supported them with funding, technical support and access to a network of social entrepreneurs in 89 countries. Ashoka is working for a world where all people are willing and able to take responsibility for solving social problems. We are politically and religiously independent and receives no government funding. Ashoka is headquartered in Washington DC and started their Scandinavian branch in 2012, led by Maja Frankel.
http://scandinavia.ashoka.org/