Mino Care

Perinatal care is generalized and does not meet the needs of Black women/birthing persons causing them to experience life threatening complications or death. This is due to maternal health care that is not culturally safe, a lack of access to information/education, and a lack of social support for these black families.

Most Black parents do not engage in prenatal and postpartum education, do not attend follow up visits postpartum, are uncomfortable and feel unheard because they are not making decisions for themselves or on behalf of their partners. Most parents have difficulty navigating care, or are busy with their lives and cannot commit to using the services that could ensure they have healthier safer pregnancies, labour and postpartum experiences. Many people try to figure out solutions to their questions or issue on their own or through family advice and do not receive the information from the health care system that would give them the opportunity to have autonomy and power to control their health experience and outcome.

Mino Care a holistic virtual perinatal health care centre. We offer access to a range of customized culturally safe health care services and supports to navigate reproductive and perinatal health.

Our technology functions through identifying all culturally safe professionals in a geographic area and connecting them to our users. We then assist these professionals by providing a platform for them to manage their clients. Since most birth workers and health care professionals in perinatal/reproductive health work individually having a platform to assist them with their clientele is necessary. We assess the patients/clients and use the information about each professional to support clients to identify professionals with commonalities that allow them to feel safe with their care. This feeling of safety and understanding helps to reduce stress, risk, increases trust and adherence and produces better health outcomes. These professionals also fill in the gap for hospitals, private clinics, etc that are struggling to provide personalized support for clients that require more attention and support from their care provider, or a care provider who understands their identity, ethnicity and habits.

Our main customer (85%) is between the ages 24-49, women, African/Caribbean/Black identifying, they work full time and are either a first time parent or on their second child. They live in Ontario or other provinces in Canada and have had a traumatic experience with the health care system. They have no knowledge of their rights as parents and have no idea what other services are available to mothers or parents seeking support pre/postpartum. Our user is also a mother that has had a child 10+ years ago and is seeking mental health support or pelvic floor therapy to help them manage their current health challenges (mainly cardiovascular - typically associated with preeclampsia, haemorrhaging, etc). Our client is also a professional that has had children later in life and seeks extra support and information. Our customer is typically not someone 55+ or under 18.

We currently have serviced based contract with the government and private funders and we serve over 50 clients a month.

Our team has expertise in building software with large corporations, providing clinical care, conducting research for the black community and handling Data that involves the Black community. We also have team members with expertise working administratively with the government in a senior position for 20+ years. There is a variety of experience that makes our team successful, also including the many health care contractors that provide the health care services to the parents.

90% of our team has a full time job and commits to Mino Care during their evenings, weekends and/ or between 9am- 5 pm on weekdays. They are committed and have been for 5+ years without any threat to their involvement.

We take the patients that are in the most risky positions from health care institutions and provide their care, we customize perinatal care holistically (including the full experience of each client with our perinatal navigators), we include the family in the care experience and social services and provide access to culturally safe professionals (with our own training program). We are a virtual community health centre for reproductive and perinatal care and we predict health outcomes and prevent adverse health outcomes.

The sustainable development goal 3 for Good Health and Well-being seeks to achieve universal health coverage, and provide access to safe and affordable medicines and vaccines for all. Mino care aims to make health care services and supports for perinatal and reproductive care more accessible globally. Our focus is identifying the gap in each community and providing services that meets their needs and assist in preventing adverse health outcomes. In the next 1-5 years we plan to expand our services to countries like Ghana to support in improving access their maternal and reproductive health care services.

The Mino Care technology includes the use of AI and predictive analytics to :

- collect and analyze patient data

- identify and recommend care services that would best support user

-develop a care package with the information shared by users 

-predict health outcomes (act as a case manager)

-organize care professional's client schedules and appointments

- receive and organize referrals from health care professionals 

-sharing patient details with health care professionals that care for client 

We currently collect data through our registration and intake form.

Some of the risks we are preparing for using predictive analytics and AI are issues with privacy, potential data breaches, unique privacy attacks, the use of our AI for malicious purposes, third party data and potential harm for Black parents if their data is shared, sold, stolen or used in a. harmful manner. To ensure ethical responsibility we are honest with our clients by sharing our processes, encouraging open communication between clients and our team, showing the alignment of our mission and values, and our commitment to ensuring their data is secured and protected without removing them from the experience. To mitigate risk we have been exploring other studies that have similar organizations and services ensuring we hire consultants to support with privacy and security and training for our staff. 

At Mino Care we work towards a world where all Black women/ birthing persons have healthy, safe and enjoyable pregnancies and birth outcomes. In the next 1-5 years we are planning towards the following impact goals:

• Systems change in maternal health care services in Canada through policy engagement
- Research exploring the maternal health experiences of Black women in Canada
- Petition
- Policies for free doula care and pelvic floor therapy for black mothers (or those with a low income) (similar to models in New York and France)
• The development of a coalition (Black maternal health caucus) to engage and organize other organizations and health care professionals 
• Development of research & data science institute 
o Publishing 100+ papers (by our research team) 
• Developing the only Black led doula training program that will include accreditation from a Canadian university and build capacity within the Black community by offering training for free for black women
• Partnerships with hospitals & birth centres to refer patients to Mino Care
o Referral system for birth centres developed with technology platform 
• Global conference series for Black Maternal, Reproductive and Infant Health
• Current database including all black birth workers and clinicians in maternal health sector in Canada
• Launch of book about the history of Black maternal health in Canada 
• Innovation team creating 1-2 products 
• Technology for clinicians to anticipate pregnancy complications before they occur completed 
• Website and social media recognized as main tools for education/information for black parents globally
• Growth with team and increased services and access to professionals
• Mixing the virtual with an in person maternal care clinic providing all services (including birth justice workshops)

We will achieve these goals by building new teams with the expertise to execute, conducting ongoing research and evaluation, increasing our social media presence, and engage experts.

Our team includes 5 people and 20+ contractors providing health care services. Our team has expertise in building software with large corporations, providing clinical care, conducting research for the black community and handling Data that involves the Black community. We also have team members with expertise working administratively with the government in a senior position for 20+ years. There is a variety of experience that makes our team successful, also including the many health care contractors that provide the health care services to the parents. 

I have been working on Mino Care (previously Mommy Monitor) since 2017 after completing my Masters education. The rest of our team have worked with us between 1-6 years. We began with a focus on research and development, our birth justice workshops and conference. In 2020 during covid we began officially providing various health care services. 

Mino Care believes in equitable perinatal health care and providing access to services that are specific to each person who uses our platform. We believe that we are building a safe space for innovation, and we prioritize diversity on our teams, board and with anyone we work with. We are rooted in lenses that shape all aspects of our work including reproductive/birth justice, data justice, cultural safety, and sharing the knowledge of choice.  At Mommy Monitor we are restoring choice and enabling birth justice and body sovereignty in a system that is not geared towards the needs of the Black parent community in Canada. We do this by offering services that are based in reproductive/birth justice, cultural safety, and anti- Black racism in care. Our team is 98% women (this includes 5 people on our core team and 20+ contractors offering health care services) and of every person is BIPOC. We developed a curriculum to train perinatal health professionals to provide culturally safe care to Black patients that we use to train with PHAC and many other institutions/organizations. We produce our own research and consistently monitor and evaluate our practices to ensure we are remaining socially responsible, and we are committed to maintaining this regardless of how large our organization becomes.  

Mino Care offers service provision, resources (birth plan for black parents, curriculum for training health care professionals/birth workers and our birth justice workshop), podcast ,database of Black health professional and birth workers in Canada, research and our conference- MinoFest to ensure that maternal health is equitable, anti-racist, patient centred and enjoyable for parents and birth workers/health care professionals. We deliver impact through the culturally safe care we provide, the data we collect, the research we conduct and the education we share. Our team is organized with 2 full time workers, 3 part time/casual and multiple contracted employees (health care professionals and consultants). Our plan was to use research to identify key players in the industry, develop a relationship with them (to informally referrals their clients to us). This allowed us to build relationships and trust and now we are developing formal partnerships with various health care institutions in Canada. 

To become financially sustainable we have identified the following solutions: 

- sell our API 

- government funding and contracts

-sales (subscription service, products)

-raising social impact funds

Our current operating costs are $415,000 with our current budget from funders but in 2024 this will become $336,000 (unless we find new funding). However, due to the increase in referrals for our services from health care institutions we are exploring larger funding opportunities and contracts from the government that will provide more funds for our services. 

I am requesting $100 000 for funding to continue our work in 2024.This number is selected based on our current need and lack of funding. The funding would be used for:

-Hiring staff (part time or on retainer): AI developer, health promoter and research manager = $60 000

- operational costs (office rental, office space items, = $30000

-consultant (to support with product Development)= $10000

The Cure Residency is an opportunity for organizations like Mino Care to join a community of innovators, share our story with the MIT Solve and global community. The networks and communities that founders develop through opportunities like this residency can change the trajectory of our business and connect us with potential partners, mentors, champions and funders. I understand the importance of networks as a founder tries to build and scale their organization. Having access to lab space, mentorship, networking opportunities and seed funding at this pivotal time in our business when we have rebranded and planning to scale is the type of support that is unmeasurable. This residency can be the start of a long lasting relationship that will change the way Canadians and the government of Canada view Black maternal health in our country and the way the world views perinatal care. I appreciate the opportunity to be considered for this residency and I look forward to a long and fruitful relationship.