Alejandro Montemayor Maldonado
Idalia Garza
pedro castro
Guillermo Castro
Mario Gerardo Garcia Alonso Ferret
EGADE Business School Tecnologico de Monterrey
Consuelo Garcia-de-la-torre
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Clinicas del Azucar offers specialized, affordable diabetes care, one-stop shop treatment centers for underprivileged Mexican people. This is possible through innovation and cutting-edge technology like innovative evidence-based algorithms, which reduces the disease’s treatment cost by 70% and the waiting and consulting time by 80%.
The innovation emerged from Javier Lozano’s knowledge, while he was studying his MBA from MIT Sloan, due to his interest in helping patients with chronic conditions. While there he was able to develop the technology that supports Clinicas del Azucar's innovative business model.
Lozano had the opportunity to discuss with Julio Frenk (Harvard’s dean and Mexico’s former health secretary) and began to have a vision of healthcare systems for underserved people in México. It's important to mention that Javier had experienced first-hand the terrible consequences of diabetes and the marked inequality in access to healthcare, as his mother suffered from type-II diabetes.
This innovation has a huge growth potential, because it offers an innovative and low-cost solution to offer the healthcare industry the means to fight México's number one cause of death. More than 14 million Mexicans suffer from diabetes and more than 80,000 die per year. Globally, Diabetes affects over 415 million people in the world, mostly in low and middle-income countries with difficult access to disease prevention, and it is a direct cause of 1.5 million deaths per year. It is estimated that by 2040, more than 642 million people will have suffer from this condition.
The lack of access of diabetes treatment and prevention can lead to increased absenteeism and reduced productivity while at work, whether as a result of a disease-related disability, early mortality, or by exclusion from the workplace to take care of sick family members.
The social impact lies mainly in the prevention of complications such as blindness, amputations and renal damage due to a lack of specialized treatment in diabetes. It also reduces likelihood of complications by 60 percent and increases treatment’s productivity by 15 percent.
Having a healthy population can lead indirectly to reduced impact on carbon emissions due to transportation from underserved communities to the populated cities with health care infrastructure for treatment.
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