Reference no: EM132867046

GlobalMedic is the operational arm of the David McAntony Gibson Foundation (DMGF), a registered Canadian charity. GlobalMedic runs capacity building programs and provides disaster relief services for large-scale disasters and complex emergencies around the world. The team is staffed by professional Canadian rescuers - specifically paramedics, police officers, nurses, doctors, and firefighters - who volunteer their time and skills to help those in need. To date, GlobalMedic has led 217 responses in 73 countries. Its six main program areas are: water, medical, food, shelter, RescUAV, and flood response.

While GlobalMedic began with medical care, clean water is now, by far, the most important element of its responses. Water is far more effective in preventing illnesses than it is to treat other diseases and much more cost-efficient as well. By providing clean drinking water to families in crisis, GlobalMedic has helped save lives and has helped hundreds of thousands of people prevent sicknesses.
There are two main modalities that GlobalMedic uses to deploy clean water after a disaster or in a complex emergency: point-of-source where water is filtered at the source and this requires a deal with the government and point-of-use water purification units where water is filtered directly at the point where water is used or in other words called household units.

Any new GlobalMedic solution needs to consider both the availability of materials and resources, as well as their costs. The Humanitarian Innovation Fund lists $20 USD as the optimal cost for household water filter units. As such, each unit should cost less than $20 USD for a family of five and must last for at least year. Given the cost restrictions, determining where to source products is also important. Being a disaster response organization, GlobalMedic may require products at short notice. If assembly takes place in Canada, then finding local material is a priority in order to minimize shipping and lag times. There is a current initiative to assemble POU units in the future in Bangladesh, at a local facility.

There are two main challenges that GlobalMedic faces: As a charity, GlobalMedic relies on donor funds. However, that amount is never sufficient to meet the seemingly endless amount of global need and when designing a POU unit for GlobalMedic, simplicity is paramount.

To build and assemble their POU units, GlobalMedic hosts volunteer packing events

Case Questions

1. Explain whether Global Medic is working B2B and/or B2C, and elaborate on their target customers.

2. Outline the role of business in society according to your understanding of the course and the case.

3. Describe the challenges that Global Medic is facing in their development of their solutions and suggest an innovative way they can overcome this.