INTELLIGENT GREEN TECHNOLOGY
where one in four children will not live to age five . Those are all linked , and they are all unacceptable . Being poor should not mean that you have poor healthcare ,” says Josh Nesbit , CEO Medic Mobile .
Kikanda Batelemao is a community health worker , referred to locally as a VHT , for Village Health Team . VHTs are the cornerstone of Uganda ’ s primary healthcare model for the millions of Ugandans who live outside the country ’ s major cities and towns . Just a few years ago , Batelemao would have to travel 35 miles each way , from the tiny hospital in Bwera to the remote mountain communities he serves , to visit his patients and report on their health .
For pregnant women , who are often forced to walk 30 to 50 miles through the densely forested mountains to see a doctor , the situation is particularly dire . A lack of basic education , access to prenatal care , and communications , is what are called the three delays .
But that situation is changing rapidly because of the tools developed by Medic Mobile to help front-line health workers like Batelemao . He carries with him a simple cellphone . It operates on a 2G cellular network , the same as many of his patients , including Florence Mbambu , who is pregnant with her third child . On Batelemao ’ s cellphone is an easy-to-use app developed by Medic Mobile that allows him to register and track the progress of Florence ’ s pregnancy , communicate reminders to her about her prenatal care and visits to the Bwera Hospital , and monitor her birth outcome .
Instead of having to walk the 35 miles to deliver the information he has collected about the state of Florence Mbambu ’ s pregnancy , Batelemao now uses the Medic Mobile app to send a text message , in real time , to the hospital staff . The hospital analyses the data sent by Batelemao and automatically sends him back a text message containing any medical updates he needs , which includes , the news that Florence
The solution is a mobile healthcare management system and runs on a Linuxbased VMware Workstation Player desktop virtualisation platform
Mbambu is due to deliver her baby on a particular date .
Batelemao uses this information to explain to her that she should leave her village for the Bwera Hospital in enough time to safely give birth . Later , the automated medical system will send Batelemao an alert to remind him again when the baby is due .
Josh Nesbit , Medic Mobile ’ s CEO , realised that a cellphone could dramatically transform healthcare because it allowed community health workers in remote villages to communicate , in real time , with the rural clinics they served . But there was a technical challenge that needed to be overcome first . The problem was how to deliver the healthcare platform to everyone who needed it . “ We realised that we could not possibly support every deployment ,” Nesbit says . “ We needed to make the software radically accessible to any clinic anywhere that needed the tools to be successful .”
The solution Medic Mobile devised was to build a mobile healthcare management system that could be installed in a snap on a mobile phone , and runs on a Linux-based VMware Workstation Player desktop virtualisation platform . It hosts the Medic Mobile software tool kit , a tool kit that combines smart messaging , decision support , easy data gathering and management , and health system analytics . The result is a variation on the concept of software as a service . As Nesbit says , it is instead , software is a service .
The Medic Mobile Dual SIM Card , enables simple cellphones to transmit patient data securely to Medic Mobile cloud servers . Working with VMware , Medic Mobile developed a modified SIM card , often made with a tool as simple as a pair of scissors , that can be inserted into any regular cellphone manufactured after 1992 . Medic Mobile calls the device a parallel SIM card . This hardware device is a microcontroller that allows the community health worker to run the Medic Mobile software tool kit apps .
VMware enables the Medic Mobile tool kit to be used in almost any kind of environment , support any language , and work with or without internet connectivity , locally or in the cloud . Medic Mobile also uses the VMware Virtual Infrastructure Extension to automate the delivery of its healthcare apps where internet connectivity makes that possible . VIX allows the Medic Mobile system to automatically send and receive SMS text messages over any cellular Wi-Fi network .
Nesbit explains it as , “ It is not medical innovation . It is a system innovation and a delivery innovation . It is rethinking who is providing care for whom .”
Medic Mobile designed these tools to work on the simplest of mobile platforms : the inexpensive cellphones that are widely available even in the poorest countries of the developing world .
More than 10,000 health workers in 23 countries in Africa and Asia use Medic Mobile ’ s tools . These 10,000 health workers care for more than five million people living in the poorest and remotest places on earth . But Nesbit is not satisfied . “ We have really ambitious five year goals ,” he says . “ By the year 2020 , we want to be supporting 200,000 health workers and improving healthcare for at least 100 million people .”
58 Issue 01 INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS