Solar-Fi Cares is an award-winning 501(c)(3) non-profit that provides off-grid rural healthcare access at low costs by embedding smart, modular rural clinics within integrated community systems of care. Solar power is becoming more affordable, and regions endowed with renewable energy sources like solar are placed to leverage a decentralized, off-grid approach to energy access. Off-grid mobile clinics are increasingly playing an important role in maximizing reach remote communities while lowering cost barriers of healthcare access.

 

Solar-Fi clinics are outfitted with basic medical equipment (sterilization systems, drug refrigeration, point of care diagnostics devices) delivered at low cost with a focus on sustainability.

We leverage public-private-partnerships to source medical equipment donated by private corporations. In any health strategy, community engagement is key. Solar-fi Cares collaborates with community-based health partners to enhance their patient engagement at the last mile. Many rural residents do not access preventive health care due to low awareness, and high indirect costs (of transportation, the opportunity cost of working). As a result, they often only seek healthcare services in an urgent situation and when it is most costly. Engaging with community health partners to provide education and outreach is critical for the high utilization of clinic services. Community engagement also makes health provision fiscally sound through adopting cost-sharing via community-based insurance schemes.

Our model also recognizes the role of technology to streamline patient operations and digital tools to connect rural health workers with urban hospitals. Patient records are managed via digital patient management platforms, which can be used across rural-urban health systems in cases of referrals.

We partnered with Microsoft to be able to deliver the internet to the remote areas which lack internet access. Please see how one of our engineers delivered the internet to a remote area in upstate New York.

SolarFi Cares is also the social arm of the business which runs programs in the developing world around entrepreneurship training, education, production, and maintenance of our solar products. The programs, in particular, are designed to assist women and young people in becoming better skilled, increasing their employability skill level, and/or helping them to start a sustainable business. The entrepreneurial skills training give participants the tools to break the cycle of poverty and unemployment that they find themselves in such as critical thinking, trade, machine learning, big data, and marketing.