Mobile phones play an increasingly integral role in daily life in the developing world and some of our greatest global health challenges can be addressed through connectivity. Medic is seizing this opportunity by developing software, hardware, implementation strategies and impact analysis in mobile health.
The SMS network brought home-based care to 130 patients who would not have otherwise received it and over 100 patients started TB treatment after their symptoms were noticed in the community and reported by text-message. Read the study in the Technology and Health Care Journal.
In the developing world, lack of infrastructure prevents health workers from delivering efficient healthcare to rural areas. As health workers travel from clinics to reach isolated patients, they are often as disconnected from central clinics as the patients they are trying to serve. Many gaps and shortcomings of health systems can be addressed using simple, locally appropriate communication technologies.
Medic Mobile develops and extends existing open-source platforms, including FrontlineSMS, OpenMRS, Ushahidi, Google Apps, and HealthMap. These tools support community health worker coordination and management, community mobilization for vaccination and satellite clinics, logistics and supply chain management, referrals, routine data collection, and mapping of health services. Our technology is sophisticated, but the minimal infrastructure requirements, remote places we work and the over-burdened health workers we empower are more likely to raise eyebrows.
Medic Mobile uses appropriate technologies to create connected, coordinated health systems that save more lives. We are a nonprofit organization with projects in ten countries, and our impact continues to grow. With your support, we will replicate proven models and continue to innovate.