Medic Mobile is proud to announce three new additions to our team!  Jonathan Mativo has been working with us for several months now, leading an exciting immunization and antenatal care program in coastal Kenya, in partnership with Kilifi Kids and the Kilifi Ministry of Health. Jessica Qu joined us in March to support our first major project in North America – a study about SMS and diabetes management at free clinics in the Bay Area. Dianna Kane just signed on as our first full-time product and service designer. Human-Centered Design (HCD) has been at the core of Medic’s ethos from day one – it’s the basis of how we understand community health workers, patients and the technologies they use in and outside of mHealth initiatives. In the last two years we’ve been developing HCD as a core competency and Dianna is here to step these efforts up a notch. We’re incredibly excited about adding these three to the Team page and we hope you’ll welcome them to the mobile health and ICT4D community!

Based in coastal Kenya, Jonathan has been a champion of ICTs for development with Plan International, as the founder of ICT4Development Kenya, and most recently with Medic Mobile. He has worked with several mobile platforms, trained hundreds of individuals to use communication technologies, and has particular experience applying FrontlineSMS for health and community development. Jonathan has a knack for demystifying technical jargon and facilitating engaging learning experiences for audiences with varying literacy, technical and educational backgrounds. He holds a masters degree in statistics and computer science from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. Find him on twitter @Mativo

Aspiring to a career in international health diplomacy, Jessica is passionate about the potential for technology and innovation to connect people and promote change in health care and community relations. She studied Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology as a Gates Millennium Scholar at Yale University, and has worked on various international relations and public health initiatives in India, the Dominican Republic, Mainland China and Tibet. Jessica leads Medic’s first U.S. initiative, focused on improving patient-centered care using mHealth technologies, with the vision of creating a suite of tools for chronic disease care at free and under-resourced clinics. Find her on twitter @jessica_qu

As Medic’s Senior Designer, Dianna’s role is to befriend community health workers and leverage human-centered design to translate insights into practical tools. Dianna has over seven years’ experience in global health, and has written heath systems strengthening plans with the Clinton Foundation in Rwanda, consulted on maternal health and malaria control for HealthRight International in Kenya and Nepal, and launched a family strengthening initiative for vulnerable families in Cape Town. She served on the founding team of the grassroots organization CHOSA, co-created the mHealth platform Kumbu Health, and has a patent pending for a medical iPhone app. Prior to joining Medic, Dianna worked on a health and social equity initiative with the Alameda County Public Health Department in Oakland, CA. Dianna earned a BA in Urban Studies from Fordham University and an MPhil in HIV/AIDS & Society from the University of Cape Town. Find her on twitter @diannakane

Last summer, Medic Mobile launched its Fellowship program by sending two Fellows to India to work with DMF-India on an ambitious vaccination project in Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, India. Building on the success of our inaugural program, we are pleased to announce the second round of our Fellowship program with the selection of two highly qualified individuals to work on our innovative endeavor to redefine antenatal care in Bangladesh with the Hope Foundation:

	Zahra Bhimani: Zahra comes to Medic Mobile with a communications and international development background. She is currently pursuing a Master’s of Public Health Degree in Global Health and Health Promotion at the University of Toronto. Zahra became fascinated with the use of ICTs in development, especially in health care while she worked for UNICEF in Kigali, Rwanda as an undergrad student while at Carleton University. While working for a non-profit international development organization in Washington, DC she came across tremendous work that was being done in the mHealth area, and decided that studying global health and the impact of ICTc would be her next step. Zahra is looking forward to advancing her research interests and contributing to an organization that is committed to improving health care access.
	Faye Maison: After graduating from Yale last year with a degree in Political Science, Faye stayed on at the university as a Woodbridge Fellow, a fellowship in academic administration. During her undergraduate career she dedicated much of her time outside of her coursework to education in the New Haven community. Her involvement in New Haven’s education initiatives focused on the processes that go into developing successful reading intervention programs. She is excited to bring her experiences in community development to the Medic Mobile project in Bangladesh this summer and to learn more about how technology is and can be integrated in development work.

Along with our partners at the Hope Foundation, Zahra and Faye will be spending the upcoming summer in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where they will launch our system and contribute periodic guest blog posts so that we can all follow along. Congratulations, Zahra and Faye – we’re thrilled to have you on our team and look forward to your accomplishments this summer!

-Priyanka (former Fellow!) and the rest of the Medic team

Medic Mobile is excited to announce it has named Amy Norris, Chief Legal Counsel of Clif Bar & Company, and Susan Nesbitt, a technology and social impact innovator, to its Board of Directors. Their unique expertise will contribute to the company’s strategic direction and Medic Mobile’s mission to improve the health of the world’s underserved and disconnected.

Amy Norris

Amy Norris is Chief Legal Counsel of Clif Bar & Company, the leading maker of wholesome and organic energy foods and drinks.  Amy has worked with Clif Bar for over three years providing legal advice to senior management on a wide range of issues and creating and implementing strategic initiatives to help optimize the company’s rapid growth. Prior to joining Clif Bar, Amy was in private practice for ten years, working most recently with the Finance and Bankruptcy Group at Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, a national law firm.  There, Amy represented a variety of clients, including entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies in a broad mix of matters, including complex financing arrangements, maritime sales and leases and mergers and acquisitions. Amy also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa.

Susan Nesbitt

Susan Nesbitt is currently an independent consultant where she is combining her unique experience in technology and service for high impact, social good engagements. She is working with clients such as Water for People, Institute of International Education/State Department and Craig Newmark. Susan previously was deputy director at Craigslist Foundation, overseeing all program development and supported craigslist Charitable Fund and Craig Newmark’s philanthropic endeavors. During this time, Susan was also founding team member of the service aggregation engine All for Good. She spent more than five years in product management roles at Yahoo! and shares a patent for a financial information portal. Susan also spent several years in the digital music industry, most notably at Shawn Fanning’s SNOCAP and then at the open source media player Songbird. Susan is a native of Chicago and got her BSBA at the University of Denver.

The 4^th millennium development goal outlined by the United Nations is to reduce child mortality.  In particular, we have until 2015 to reduce the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds.  This involves meeting certain metrics in the realm of both infant mortality and adequate vaccination.  In July of 2011, Medic began an ambitious pilot in Kurnool, India to demonstrate the potential of automated SMS reminders sent directly to families of newborns in improving immunization rates.  After enrolling nearly 400 families in this intervention, interim data suggests a ~20% increase in complete vaccination rates above local baseline levels, well into the 90^th percentile.  While moving forward with plans to further evaluate and scale this system, we are also turning our attention to address MDG number 5: improving maternal health.

Mainul speaks with VHWs and mothers during a focus group session

The UN and the WHO recognize regular antenatal care (ANC) as being one of the best means of improving both maternal and infant health.  Studies have shown that ANC reduces rates of preterm labor, improves perinatal infant survival, reduces infection rates, and is associated with higher infant birth weights.  ANC can also detect anemia, identify and treat sexually transmitted infections, and triage women who are at higher risk for obstetric complications.  Although the WHO recommends four routine ANC appointments during every woman’s pregnancy, most developing world countries fall well short of these expectations.  In Bangladesh, only 21% of women receive the full complement of ANC visits, and 49% do not attend even a single session.  During focus group sessions in Cox’s Bazar we asked Bangladeshi mothers why they thought these numbers were so low.  After two hours of discussion, several primary barriers to ANC in the community became clear: (1) difficulty remembering when to show up for an appointment, (2) difficulty traveling to the clinic/hospital, and (3) insufficient knowledge/misconceptions surrounding the importance and goals of ANC.  With respect to the last point, there was a pervasive fear that ANC care would inevitably result in C-section delivery.

Mainul, Nadim, and Hope staff outside a rural clinic

With these concerns in mind, we have forged a partnership with the Hope Foundation for Women & Children of Bangladesh, a non-profit organization that provides maternal and child health services through a hospital in Cox’s Bazar and a network of clinics in the surrounding area.  Using village health workers (VHWs), locally-recruited women tasked to assist with healthcare delivery, we plan to challenge the traditional clinic-based model of ANC and instead bring it to the patient’s doorstep.  VHWs will be trained to perform ANC as per the WHO curriculum and collect laboratory samples at the point-of-care.  Appointment reminders, data collection, and training reinforcement will be supported through low-tech mobile phones and a Medic-built centralized records system.  Concerning laboratory values will be automatically flagged in the records system and trigger an appointment with Hope’s solitary Ob-Gyn physician, thus creating an intelligent triage system for higher-level care.  In a 500-sample, randomized-controlled trial, we will be piloting this novel system with the gracious support of Clif Bar & Company.  Stay tuned in the coming weeks for updates as we expand our team (including new fellows!) in anticipation of our summer launch!

- Nadim \+/

Medic Mobile currently supports ANC projects in Ethiopia and Kenya, with upcoming projects in Bangladesh, Nepal and elsewhere. You can read more about the project in Ethiopia on the ICT4CHW mailing list.

* Photo credits: Giselle Natassia and Nadim Mahmud