CompetitionApril 2026

Second place in the Healthcare & Life Science track at the Tufts New Ventures Competition

Our first venture competition, and a $10,000 award: judged on a working offline-first record system rather than a slide deck.

Toye Adebayo, Teny Makuach and Ekow Williams holding the $10,000 check at the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts

On April 10, 2026, at the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, TamamHealth took second place in the Healthcare & Life Science track of the Tufts New Ventures Competition, and a $10,000 award with it. It was the first venture competition we had ever entered.

The story we told the judges does not start in a lab or a lecture hall. It starts in Kakuma refugee camp, where our founder, Teny Makuach, grew up. The failures this platform is built to fix were never an abstraction to him: they were a queue with no order to it, a clinician rebuilding a history by asking the patient to remember it, a treatment given twice because nobody could see what had already been given. He built the first version of TamamHealth out of that. Ekow Williams and Toye Adebayo joined him having watched the same system fail the same way, first-hand. None of the three of us needed the problem explained.

Toye Adebayo, Teny Makuach and Ekow Williams standing together with competition badges — Toye Adebayo, Teny Makuach and Ekow Williams before the results were announced.

So we pitched from the product rather than about it. The live record system was on the screen behind us, running a full patient day with the network switched off: registration, triage, consultation, lab orders, dispensing, and the reports that go back to the Ministry. Nothing in the demo was a mock-up, and nothing in it required a connection.

Teny Makuach pitching with a microphone, the live record system on the projector behind him — Teny pitching from the product itself: the live record system on screen, not a slide deck.

Ekow Williams presenting with a microphone beside the lectern — Ekow making the case in the Healthcare & Life Science track.

The judges score eight things, and one of them is whether this is the right team to solve this problem. That was the easiest answer we had. The rest came from the constraint rather than the ideal: 4% of South Sudan's facilities have a computer with internet, 13% have any on-site power, and there are 7.6 health workers per 10,000 people against a WHO norm of 44.5. A record system that assumes connectivity is a record system that fails there, so ours does not assume it.

A team member answering questions with a microphone during the pitch — Taking the judges' questions: five minutes of them, after a five-minute pitch.

It was the first time the platform had been judged by people outside the team, and the answer came back on the thing itself rather than on the pitch around it. The work ahead is the one it was built for: ten clinics in Juba and greater South Sudan, on one record.

The team receiving the oversized $10,000 check on stage — Receiving the award on stage.

The team holding the $10,000 check together with the competition judges — The team with the judges and the $10,000 check.

Meet the team behind it ›

More from the nightApril 10, 2026: the night the pilot got its first funding

6 more photos, scroll

The team demoing the platform on a laptop at a standing table during the reception — Demoing the record system between sessions.

Ekow Williams in conversation at the reception — Ekow talking through the pilot.

The team called up through an applauding audience as the results are announced — The moment the results were read out.

Founders laughing together while holding the check — Letting it sink in.

The team posing with the check while a guest takes a photo — Photos with the check.

The three founders standing full-length with the check in front of the Derby Entrepreneurship Center banner — At the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts.

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