After four years of witnessing the pains of women in a rural area where he was the head doctor, he created a healthtech to facilitate breast and cervical cancer screening.
Conrad Tankou (photo) is a Cameroonian entrepreneur and founder of heathtech startup Global Innovation and Creativity Space (GIC Space). Through GIC Space (founded in 2018), he developed GICMED, a project aimed at facilitating remote cervical and breast cancer screening.
“GICMED offers cutting edge and cost-effective MedTech and Telemedicine Innovations, enabling poor, remote, and rural communities with the greatest need to enjoy affordable and accessible healthcare,” the startup explains on its website. Indeed, with its services and products, notably breast and cervical cancer screening, smart speculum, fine needle biopsy syringe adapter, and digital pathology center, it allows patients to remotely and quickly get screened wherever they are. It also allows doctors to seek their colleagues’ contributions.
With GICMED, Conrad wants to help women living in remote areas quickly access cervical and breast cancer screening. His wish is to see the solution deployed in every village in Cameroon and Sub-Saharan Africa.
For his works, the P.h.D (in biomedical science in 2013) holder has earned several national and international awards and recognitions. For instance, through GICMED, he won Cameroon's 2019 Startup of the Year award. Then, a year later, he won the Next Einstein Forum Challenge in Kigali. In 2021, GICMED was the winner of the Africa Young Innovators for Health Award presented by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Speak Up Africa.
Before GIC Space, Conrad Tankou had co-founded (with his compatriot Alain Nteff) GiftedMom, in 2013, to improve maternal and child health. From 2014 to 2018, he was the head doctor of Bambalang Medical center, in North-West Cameroon.
Melchior Koba
