Incuheal - Our Brand

By Nathan Payne

Every business has a brand regardless if they are in the profit or not for profit sector but what does the Incuheal brand promote and believe in.  Our main focus is reducing the infant mortality rate in third world and developing countries and all our business efforts are focused on this one goal, everything we do in one way or another aims to address this issue.

 

Our mission is to provide a simple and affordable solution to help fight infant deaths that can be simply prevented with our easy to use product. With this in mind what are some of words we hope for people to associate with our brand? Words such as driven, passionate, innovate and reliable are all words we aim to entrench in our brand and are words we hope that our stakeholders and the general public perceive as brand as. The social problem we are addressing is a massive problem worldwide especially in third world countries and we really hope to establish our brand in these regions so that it is trusted and recognised as a leader in its field. We hope that people will come to rely on Incuheal to assist them in protecting their infants at their most vulnerable with our product and that our customers  come to learn how important such a product is especially in countries that don’t have the state off the art facilities and hospitals nearby.

 

Our product is game changer to a massive social problem but a great product isn’t enough these days, it is essential to build up a very positive reputation and brand image to assist our product and instil confidence in our customers that Incuheal is a must have to protect their young, there for we will strive to build a very strong brand that people will come to know, trust and love.

 

Social Entrepreneurship

By Nathan Payne

Social entrepreneurship is emerging as an innovative approach for dealing with complex social needs. With its emphasis on problem solving and social innovation, socially entrepreneurial activities blur the traditional boundaries between the public, private and non‐profit sector, and emphasize hybrid models or for‐profit and non‐profit activities (Johnson, 2000). With this definition in mind what are your thoughts on social enterprise???

The aim of this blog is to generate discussion on Social Entrepreneurship which is rapidly increasing in today’s society. As Inuheal is a social venture we are very interested in Social Entrepreneurship and how it can be effectively used to help tackle social problems our modern world faces.

Why did we use our combined skills on a not for profit as opposed to using our business skills and resources and apply these to a for profit venture which would be of much value to us personally? We found a problem we believed needed to be addressed which was the infant Mortality rate in third world and developing countries and came to the decision that this required out attention. Our view was that a social enterprise would be the best way to tackle this problem. I believe a social enterprise offers a different value proposition than for profit organisations and I believe that the public respect the work of social organisations that much more than that of an organisation solely focused on profit and this is a major factor to the success of social ventures.

What are your thoughts on social entrepreneurship and the effect it is having on today’s society, negative or positive??

Social media and the health care industry

By Jessica Grant

In Kane’s (et al) article, Community Relations 2.0, the emerging use of social media in connecting people with a common illness or health concern from all over the world is discussed in depth. The research, which we assume is focused predominantly in the US, shows that the majority of these social networks are established to form support groups for people with serious illnesses, or for the parents of children with these illnesses. They come together to share experiences, gain empowerment and to brainstorm potential cures for these diseases. Because these “parent communities” exist outside of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, there is more freedom to discuss topics of a sensitive and confidential nature where a health care provider would be unable to.

Health care organisations, such as Partners HealthCare, are starting to use social media platform Sermo to talk to each other about challenging cases and to be able to both solve cases and contribute to the solving of other cases that match their areas of expertise.

My question to you is, what do you think of Incuheal’s use of social media so far? In terms of achieving our goals, how else do you think we could be leveraging different platforms? Do you think there is a place for us to be using platforms such as Sermo? How do you think we could be making the most of these platforms?

Asking the experts

By Andrew Langmead

Robwyn Gregson is the Clinical Area Manager for Maiyers Australia, and has years of experience working the field of neonatal intensive care. I spoke to Robwyn to gain an expert’s insight into the Incuheal and the benefits it could offer in today’s medical industry.

“There is a definite requirement with babies that are pre-term – less than 40 weeks – due to them having significantly less body fat,” Robwyn begins. “The most effective method of warming an infant is by contact with the mother’s skin – it’s natural, effective, clean, just the right temperature and there’s no equipment required. This isn’t always possible though, so there are various methods to keep newborn infants warm”.

There are various methods is a hospital setting, the most common of which is referred to simply as an ‘infant warmer’: an umbrella-like device that goes over a cot to provide radiant heat.

Robwyn’s assessment of the Incuheal highlighted some key features; “The advantages of a system like the Incuheal are that it’s inexpensive, it doesn’t require a vast amount of operator training, there are no components to fail – other than the bag getting a hole – and it can be used safely in the home or in a hospital setting.”

One of most critical side effects would be burns to the occupant, which is why the Incuheal lining is designed to be of a thickness such that the interior temperature could not reach such temperatures.

A keen supporter of the Incuheal, Robwyn will be assisting the design of and overseeing the trial process. Initially to involve a trial with premature lambs and piglets, the later stages plan to carry out a 500 patient, multi-disciplinary trail across four sites. The settings will be community, general hospital, and two rural environments, to effectively demonstrate the device in a number of working environments.

Robwyn described a new scheme the government is launching, “looking at regulating the training of midwives that are qualified to do home births.” She explains that “the government is putting together a pack to for midwives to have with them when delivering a baby in the home. An Incuheal would be a very significant device to add to that pack in the event that the child had to be safely and warmly transported.”

Preterm babies die because they’re not able to thermo-regulate effectively, an issue the Incuheal is designed to relieve. Robwyn highlights the importance of the material being resistant to common hospital grade disinfectant solutions. “Particularly if the device is to be used in a home or third world environment, the ability for it to be easily cleaned, disinfected and maintained is key. The choice of a rubberised PVC material would cater well to these requirements.”

As the Clinical Area Manager for one of Australia's leading medical supply companies, Robwyn’s enthusiasm for the Incuheal is valued immensely by our team, and we thank her for offering her time and support.

Incuheal's guerrilla marketing tactics

By Danny Lu

Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that uses low cost unconventional marketing tactics in order to promote the company’s brand.  It involves personal interaction among the group of promoters to get the message across to the audience because the budget is smaller than traditional marketing.  The intention of guerrilla marketing is to attract the masses and bring in as many followers as we can to support our product and our cause. 

The guerrilla marketing tactics that have played an influenced towards applying my own guerrilla marketing efforts towards incuheal would have to be the flash mob.  An example of one of my favourite flash mob is shown below on YouTube about the T-Mobile Dance will has gone viral with more than 36 millions views.

Another one of my favourite guerrilla marketing tactics was the Red Bull energy drink.  There were a number of occasions at Swinburne when I have come across this type of car with the energy drink attached on the car in which two ladies are providing free energy drinks.  I think the free sample is a brilliant idea in order to encourage individuals to try their product to build more potential customers. 

There are several ideas that I have in mind to promote our product.  One of the guerrilla marketing ideas that can be implemented towards incuheal to promote our incubator product is to plan a flash mob, which will be uploaded, on YouTube to gain buzz and generate publicity.  The flash mob would contain hundreds of dancers who will use their bodies to create the shape of an incubator and will include a giant toy baby with a happy facial expression positioned in between the dancers to look like the baby was fitted inside the incubator.  The giant toy baby will also contain a message written on his shirt that says “imagine how many babies would still be alive like me if they were incuhealed”.  This is to create public awareness and get our message across that premature babies can be healed if they were placed inside an incubator.  The other intention is to make the public feel sympathy for our cause in order to gain followers to support our campaign, which is to save premature infants in third world nations.    

Another guerrilla marketing idea that I have thought of is to provide fake-parking tickets attached to people’s car windows.  The middle section of the ticket will be written in capitals that will appear to be as “VIOLATION” in which captures the attention of the audience.  This will caused surprised recipients to read what the page contains which will be to invite the public to attend a seminar in order for us to find potential advocates who can volunteer and promote our product by recommending the public about how useful our incubators can be to save lives.  The fake parking ticket would be worded, as “you are required to attend incuheal seminar to avoid penalty”.

Seth Godin

By Jessica Grant

Here at Incuheal we’re obsessed with Seth Godin. He’s the marketing and tribes guru behind the popular TED Talks videos ‘How to get your ideas to spread’, ‘This is broken’ and ‘The tribes we lead’. He has also written several books on the topics.

We’ve recently started watching Seth’s Blog and following the short snippets of insight he posts daily. 

Of his recent posts, our favourite is this:

Waiting for all the facts

"I'm just going to wait until all the facts are in..."

All the facts are never in. We don't have all the facts on the sinking of the Titanic, on the efficacy of social media or on whether dogs make good house pets. We don't have all the facts on hybrid tomatoes, global warming or the demise of the industrial age, either.

The real question isn't whether you have all the facts. The real question is, "do I know enough to make a useful decision?" (and no decision is still a decision).

If you don't, then the follow up question is, "What would I need to know, what fact would I need to see, before I take action?"

If you can't answer that, then you're not actually waiting for all the facts to come in.

This struck a chord with us because we are in the process of launching a product to a group over on the other side of the globe, and while it is imperative for us to conduct analysis, talk to people about this product, design the best product possible and make sure we get it right (there’s no room for error in a product like this), we’re never going to be 100% certain that all of the stars have aligned. Whatever we’re working on at the time, whether it be plans to launch our product in a new country or set up a meeting with a big investor, what we do need to do is to get ourselves to a point where we can confidently say that it’s go time, even though we won’t have all of the answers.

One of his blog’s on a similar topic:

When execution gets cheaper, so should planning

If you're going to build a $10 million skyscraper, by all means, plan and prototype and discuss and plan some more.

On the other hand, if the cost of finding out is a phone call, make the call. No need to spend a lot of time planning how to call or when to call or which phone to use when execution is fast and cheap.

The digital revolution has, as in so many other areas, flipped the equation here. The cost of building digital items is plummeting, but our habit is to plan anyway (because failure bothers us, and we focus on the feeling of failure, not the cost).

The goal should be to have the minimum number of meetings and scenarios and documentation necessary to maximize the value of execution. As it gets faster and easier to actually build the thing, go ahead and make sure the planning (or lack of it) keeps pace.

Check out Seth Godin’s blog and also take a look at his TED Talks. His talks are entertaining, insightful, aim to change the status quo and go for about 17 minutes each.

Response to UNICEF videos

By Danny Lu

This week I have been searching for inspirational UNICEF videos in which relates to our social enterprise.
A couple of these video links below are about bringing healthcare to remote areas, which can be viewed via this link.

Bringing healthcare to remote areas

 

UNICEF aims to reduce the rates of infant and maternal mortality in Afghanistan

The reason this video captured my attention was because one of the main causes of death from infant mortality is of third world nations who do not live close by to a hospital.  Advocates in this video have the intention to overcome the barriers with marginalised populations in villages and towns in third world nations.   The video shows tragic stories of parents outliving their children due to preventable deaths such as diarrhoea and pneumonia.  The main reason their child has died is because they could not afford to travel to a hospital, as it is too far and expensive.  This videos provides inspiration in the sense that our incuheal incubators should aim to provide the product not only to hospitals but also in remote areas such as villages, towns and country sides in third world countries in which families do not have live close by to a hospital.  We intend to provide our product by using advocates to help promote our product.  Advocates will travel around all remote areas in third world nations to demonstrate to families about our product and how to use it.  We will also aim to seek support from the government to pay for healthcare costs, which will allow us to provide this product for free to families who are too poor to even afford our economic incuheal incubators.

To make this happen we need your help.  If anyone of you feels strongly about giving back and making a difference to the world or helping people less fortunate than yourself, now is your chance.  Please sign up to be an advocate for incuheal incubators.  This is an experience that you will cherish and be proud of for the rest of your lives.