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February 2020

The Transformational Investment Capacity (TIC) brings together innovators and experts with new ideas and the desire to transform MSF’s response to the most pressing medical and humanitarian challenges of today and tomorrow.

Over the last three years, the TIC has approved 54 projects that are transforming the quality of care for our patients; strengthening our operational response with advanced tools and technology; developing the skills and expertise of our frontline staff; and implementing initiatives to be more efficient and better use our funds and people for our social mission.

We’ve had a great start to 2020 with ideas for new incubator and large-scale projects continuing to emerge from across the MSF movement. This year, we will further accelerate the impact of our projects and accompany projects transitioning to scale.

We welcome applications from any MSFer interested in finding new solutions and ways of working to better meet the needs of populations affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters or exclusion from health care.

The TIC Selection Committee met on February 18th and we are pleased to share the following project-related updates:

Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in MSF – is addressing the exclusion of persons with disabilities by raising awareness in MSF offices and in the field, adopting best practices producing guidelines, and providing transformative training for MSF staff. After recruiting a new Communications Officer with experience in intersectional communications, the team developed a communications strategy to give more visibility to this issue in the movement. This in turn creates a feedback loop to strengthen internal acceptance and advocacy. The project team is working with MSF’s Operational Directorates to further the strong uptake of staff training and collaborating with external partners to adopt best practices and share knowledge.

Migration History Tool – is overcoming challenges in providing health care to migrants by developing a mobile, interactive and flexible data collection tool. By mapping migrant travel and correlating these journeys to health conditions, this tool is supporting MSF’s decision-making to provide health services on migrant routes. The team has developed a tool that is being piloted in Zimbabwe, Colombia, and South Africa.

Patient Multimedia Engagement Toolkit – is designing a toolkit that uses social and digital technologies to better reach individuals experiencing extortion, torture and sexual violence during their migration journey. Pilots in Mexico and Colombia are being planned. The Colombia pilot will focus on sexual violence to increase the number of patients reached, reduce stigma, and empower patients in the health care process. The team is also developing outcome metrics to evaluate the impact of the toolkit.

Laboratory Information Management System – is transforming the quality and standard of MSF Epicentre lab workflows by implementing a system to efficiently manage patient data, track samples, generate reports, and enable real-time access to results in remote labs. In 2019, the team completed a pilot and is now in production in Uganda and is receiving very positive user feedback. The team is planning to complete second pilot in Niger in the coming months.

TIC Application Process and Governance

Under MSF’s recently approved resource-sharing agreement (RSA4), there are some changes to the TIC proposal application and approval process.

TIC projects are now classified into three investment categories:
• Incubator Ideas (investments less than €250,000)
• Large-Scale Projects (investments between €250,000 and €2.5M)
• Very-Large-Scale Projects (investments of €2.5M+)

We invite you to visit our TIC website and SharePoint (MSF email address required) to read more about the changes to the TIC application process, sponsorship requirements, and approval process. We are also planning various webinars in the coming months to explain how the TIC can play the most valuable role possible in supporting MSF’s transformation and positively impact our social mission – so please stay tuned.

The TIC will continue to track and ensure the visibility of our projects at all levels of MSF. All TIC projects will continue to benefit from the guidance and governance of our TIC Selection Committee, which is comprised of thought leaders and subject-matter experts in technology, medicine, finance, entrepreneurship, humanitarian operations and human capital.

Finally, the TIC Secretariat is always on standby to support our project teams and individuals interested in submitting proposals – please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at tic@msf.org if you have any questions.

TIC @ MSF Scientific Days

Are you planning to attend MSF Scientific Days in London? We invite you to engage with TIC project teams presenting and/or exhibiting their work including GeoMSF, Environmental Impact Toolkit, Meteorological and Climatic Anticipation and more. The TIC will also have a table at the event so please stop by and say hello!