Ep #291: Technology Brings HealthCare and Innovation to Underserved Communities – with Kornelius Bankston

 In this episode of the ShiftShapers Podcast, David welcomes Kornelius Bankston. Kornelius is managing partner at techPLUG, an innovation firm that integrates tech and healthcare for diverse populations.David and Kornelius discuss the determinants of healthcare such as location transportation, prescription availability and food security. Kornelius explains what marginalized communities are and what they need. He explains how techPLUG came about and what technological solutions they offer to health problems many underserved people face today.What You’ll Learn From this Episode:1:46 techPLUG and marginalized communities5:40 Finding and implementing solutions12:19 Kornelius’ background17:00 The future and historical problemsQuotes:“We identify an ambassador in a city, and typically it’s the department of health, to partner with to bring these innovative solutions to the community.”“As supposed to developing solutions in a vacuum, we’re able to bring real data, real time, quantitative and qualitative information back to the companies within our portfolio so they can provide the best possible solution to these populations.”“I really don’t think a lot of companies that have innovative health solutions are really conscientiously having their innovation addressing the population.”“There’s a lot of distrust within the healthcare system.”“In tech, there’s this whole idea around privacy and data security and a lot of populations of underserved and marginalized communities really don’t understand where the data is going and who’s keeping data and how they get empowered by the data.”