The Shamiri Institute has announced a donation from the fiat-crypto payment provider, Alchemy Pay (ACH), of Sh11.4 million ($100,000) towards wearable electronic devices.
The devices will be used to aid research mental health intervention and improvement for Kenyan adolescents and young adults who will benefit from a technologically advanced approach to data collection.
Sensors in wearable devices can collect physiological data that enable the monitoring and assessment of patients in an unobtrusive way.
The data collected through wearable devices can be monitored by the patient themselves, and healthcare providers to personalise a patient’s healthcare program.
Harvard University will join Shamiri Institute as the co-investigator in this wearable study.
Specifically, Ph.D candidate and Shamiri Institute co-founder Katherine Venturo-Conerly, along with Tom Osborn and a team of scientific advisors and collaborators including Professor John Weisz of Harvard University, Eve Puffer of Duke University, David Ndetei of University of Nairobi, Christine Wasanga of Kenyatta University, and Thomas Rusch of Vienna University of
Economics and Business, will be designing and planning the study protocol, and will be involved in data collection and the subsequent data analysis.
Alchemy Pay’s Head of Communications, Karmen Tang, said of the donation: “As a global blockchain company we are focused on supporting social causes that go beyond just financial reform. Mental health is especially important now after seeing how the pandemic has impacted many lives, not just in developing nations. By supporting the fantastic work Shamiri is doing we can broaden the scope of what we do beyond decentralised finance and into the healthcare industry and other social causes.”
The Shamiri Institute is not the only initiative Alchemy Pay is supporting in Africa.
Over the past few months, it has begun talks with officials in the Kingdom of Lesotho, Sudan, and Botswana with the aim of enabling citizens to access global finance through the use of cryptocurrency payments and investment.
Alchemy Pay also recently founded the Blockchain Infrastructure Alliance alongside Avalanche, NEAR, and Polygon to bring together industry leaders across all areas of blockchain technology and collectively promote the reform of global finance for the benefit of society globally.
“We are all very excited to bring this cutting-edge science to Kenya and it is great to have the support of the innovative team at Alchemy Pay,” said Natalie Johnson, Research Manager at Shamiri Institute.
“Using wearable devices will allow us unique insight into moment-to-moment participant wellbeing as they go about their lives," Katherine Venturo-Conerly says.
"Using wearables is such an informative and exciting new research direction, that I hope will help us better to understand individuals’ health and well-being as they are experienced in the world,” Katherine Venturo-Conerly adds.
About Alchemy Pay
Alchemy Pay is an integrated fiat and cryptocurrency gateway solutions provider, powering seamless crypto and fiat acceptance for merchant networks, developers, and financial institutions.
The company drives adoption of blockchain technology by making crypto investment, commercial transactions, and DeFi services readily accessible to consumers and institutions in traditional finance.
Today, Alchemy Pay supports over 70 countries with 300 payment channels and has touchpoints with more than 2 million merchants through partnerships with industry giants such as Binance, Shopify, NIUM, QFPay, and more.
You can follow Alchemy Pay on Twitter and Telegram. Learn more about their work on their website
About Shamiri Institute
Shamiri Institute is a data-driven public benefit organisation that leverages cutting edge data driven social science research and a deep knowledge of the communities it works with to build a future in which young people can actualise their life potential.
The institute has developed its proprietary low-cost group intervention “Shamiri Intervention” - gold-standard clinical trials found these interventions to be comparable to standard psychotherapy.
Shamiri Institute’s research has been published in leading medical and psychology journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology and BMJ.