Innovation & Entrepreneurship for Health Workers: Start an Innovative Business from Scratch Using Design Thinking

Hello, my name is Vicent Nemeyimana. I am a nurse and public health professional, a researcher, and an award-winning sustainability entrepreneur. In short, I currently wear three hats:

1. I work as a nurse at Mulago National Referral Hospital.

2. I serve part-time as a tutor and lecturer at Jeph International University (formerly,Indian Institute of Health and Allied Sciences).

3. I pursue innovations and entrepreneurship through Miklah Life, a social enterprise I formally founded in 2019.

As you can see, everything I will teach you in this course is based on experience. If I haven’t tried it myself, I won’t advise it. So, you can trust me.

Just like you, I never imagined I would become an entrepreneur, nor did I think of approaching life as an innovator and businessman. However, as I progressed in my nursing and public health career, I felt that I was not fully utilizing my knowledge, skills, and experiences. There was a vacuum, a sense of unfulfillment, and I often felt that I could do more.

Importantly, I was also financially struggling – still not wealthy, but certainly better than I was! Innovation and entrepreneurship became a way to escape poverty and other limitations and create an alternative source of income.

As already stated, I am not wealthy yet, but I truly know I am better than I was before joining entrepreneurship.

In other words, two motivations pushed me into entrepreneurship: 1. The search for fulfilment, being and doing more, enlarging impact; 2. The search for additional income, for surely financial struggle is real.

I suspect this is true for many of you: we are all limited not by our potential, but by the philosophies of our training and the environment around us. Otherwise, we could do much more. We could actually add more income to what we are currently earning.

In fact, having an additional source of income is not just a by-the-way – it is a priority. And, honestly, it should be one of your first reasons for innovating anything or becoming an entrepreneur.

Looking back, I started exploring my creativity and potential as far back as secondary school:

• I sang and recorded songs as early as high school times (some of which are on My YouTube Channel).

• I wrote my first book while still in high school. See all my books here.

• I started familiarizing myself with computers as soon as I could, also during high school at Mutolere Secondary School.

• I launched my first blog (or website) in 2014, shortly after arriving in Kampala.

Fast forward: these creative activities grew into something more formal in 2019, and Miklah Life was born, exactly after I won the Total Startupper of the Year award.

I have won various awards ever since, fully-funded fellowships across the world, and many connections across all countries. And yes, my impact is big. See it all here.

The key point here is simple: I was once just like you—unsure where innovation and entrepreneurship would fit in my life, especially the life of a nurse or public health professional or health worker.

But today, entrepreneurship has truly changed my life, given me purpose, and complements my work as a nurse and public health professional. I feel fulfilled.

This course is designed specifically for you:

Nurses, midwives, pharmacists, doctors, laboratory technicians, physiotherapists, and all other health professionals.

Our training and work experience distance us from approaching life as business-creators and owners. This is a mistake. And this course is meant to empower you overcome those limitations.

It is created by your fellow professional, with the goal of igniting your innovation and entrepreneurship spirit, enhancing your accomplishments, and helping you achieve life fulfillment.

By the end of this course, you will have achieved a lot, the most important being that you will go out with a ready-to-launch business idea. We will practically enable you (no matter your experience and background) to innovate a new initiative and have a clear concept for it, ready to launch.

In summary, below are the objectives to achieve:

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

1. See opportunities where you currently see routine work, and confidently identify real problems worth turning into innovative businesses or initiatives.

2. Turn a raw idea into a testable business concept from scratch, using Design Thinking—even with no money, no prior business background, and no experience.

3. Build and validate a business idea quickly, so you stop guessing and start creating solutions people actually want and are willing to support or pay for.

4. Clearly explain why your idea should exist, by crafting a strong value proposition and a simple business model that makes sense to customers, partners, and supporters.

5. You will walk away with a real business in your hands—designed, structured, and ready to launch.

6. Complete a simple and yet powerful business template for your ready-to-launch business idea and fill its business model canvas as well. These two templates together with other already filled ones for learning have been shared here.