MiracleFeet is the largest global non-profit organization working to ensure that every child born with clubfoot has access to the medical care they need to thrive.
Founded in 2010, MiracleFeet has already helped nearly 70,000 children across 334 clinics in 30 countries. Through partnerships with local healthcare providers, MiracleFeet helps bring the inexpensive solution – The Ponseti Method – to children who need it. With our help, clubfoot treatment is either free or very low-cost for the families who require it.
How did you come up with the idea for the charity?
Whilst working at The University of Iowa during my 40s, a colleague showed me a video of the devastating consequences of untreated clubfoot. It was heart-breaking to learn that one out of every 600 babies are born with the condition: nearly 200,000 a year. It was also heart-breaking that the simple, non-invasive, and inexpensive treatment routinely provided in developed healthcare systems such as the UK and US, is largely unavailable to children in low- and middle-income countries.
I was instantly drawn to the possibility of making a difference in the lives of children globally, so, I joined a small group of parents and surgeons hoping to start an organisation to address the long-overlooked issue of untreated clubfoot.
Things took off from there and my entrepreneurial experience from my corporate background in working with investment banking, management consulting, and technology start-ups was a huge help in moving ambition into action.
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How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?
During the early years of MiracleFeet, when we only had a few clinics, we could visit them in person to keep updated with patients and their progress, and to ensure we were meeting the high standards we set for ourselves. But as the organisation grew, this became increasingly difficult.
We needed a streamlined data collection tool to support and track patient progress across our growing global network of clinics and providers. So, we developed a mobile data collection app, CAST, which allowed us to transform how we gather and use real-time data worldwide. This makes it easy to monitor the status of each child’s care, which has allowed us to scale quickly without sacrificing quality.
If something is flagged in CAST, the centralised team can work with the local teams to find a solution which will work best in their area, making for a much more streamlined and customised way of working.
Because everything could be done online, the team didn’t skip a beat during the pandemic. The technology allowed work to continue without the need for the central team to visit the clinics in person, as all processes were fed through the app.
What can we hope to see from MiracleFeet in the future?
Looking ahead to the future, we have numerous developments in progress, in particular we are currently working on a brace sensor that can detect if a brace is being worn properly, and how often.
Data from the sensor feeds back to the digital system and providers can counsel parents on the importance of correct use. This is still in the preliminary stages of development, but we see a lot of potential for a technology like this in helping prevent relapse.
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