Tools for more connected healthcare systems.
Medic Mobile develops open source software such as SIM apps, and contributes to long standing open source communities like FrontlineSMS and OpenMRS. Our core products team is supported by our philanthropic partners, and health services organizations often contract with us to accelerate development of specific features. Occasionally we use software like EpiSurveyor or Vumi that we did not help develop. Our growing toolkit emphasizes open source, the most widely available infrastructure and the importance of tools that feel familiar to the health workers who use them.
SIM Apps
SIM card apps are a part of the global GSM standard that enables simple, menu driven applications to run directly from a phone’s SIM card. Our award winning SIM apps function like the M-Pesa SIM app, but they run on a paperclip-size parallel SIM card that fits between a phone and any carrier’s SIM card – enabling our SIM apps to work on virtually any standard GSM phone, and with any mobile network operator. Our SIM app framework enables us to rapid-prototype new apps for a variety of data collection and communication needs.
Patient View
PatientView is a simple and easy-to-use electronic medical record system (EMR) targeting small clinics or single departments that have little support from professional IT staff. Many of these clinics are currently using paper medical records and would benefit from the improved efficiency and reliability of an EMR, but do not have the technical staff to maintain a large, complex EMR. To address this problem, PatientView was designed to be easy to set up, easy to maintain, and easy to use. Beyond simplicity and usability, PatientView has many mobile features that are useful when working with health workers in the field, like the ability to coordinate SMS to and from the workers, accept forms submitted on mobile phones, and more.
The OpenMRS Messaging Module
The Messaging Module is a module for OpenMRS that sends a variety of messages including SMS, emails, and Twitter direct messages. While it does have its own user interface that can be used for sending messages to patients, its main purpose is to enable other modules to send these messages. In the coming months it will be used to send medication reminders, receive patient data from the field, dispatch alerts to care providers, and more.
TextForms
TextForms is a module for FrontlineSMS, developed to efficiently and accurately send structured information via plain text SMS available on lowest-common-denominator handsets in low-resource settings. It provides a simple syntax and enables structured data collection with the robustness and scalability of SMS through plain text, boolean, multiple choice, and checklist responses. We are collaborating with Google to enable TextForms to update information about health facilities in Resource Finder, a tool Google has developed to help disseminate updated information about which services various health facilities offer in a disaster area. TextForms will allow relief workers to update a given facility’s available bed status, which types of specialists are on staff, etc, all via SMS.
FrontlineSMS
FrontlineSMS is a free software program that allows you to text message with large groups of people anywhere there is a mobile signal. Using this software, a laptop plugged into a cell phone becomes a low-cost communication hub. We use FrontlineSMS to improve communications between clinical staff and field staff, saving resources, time, and lives. Additionally, there is a plugin architecture built into FrontlineSMS that allows us to create other tools on top of it.
CelloPhone
CelloPhone is a revolutionary diagnostic tool that will be able to perform basic diagnostics such as Complete Blood Count, diagnosis of Malaria and TB, and CD4 T Lymphocyte count on the back of a camera phone. The device utilizes a new imaging technique called LUCAS that can take cellular-level images of blood or other liquids without complex lens systems or microscope hardware. An algorithm then analyzes cell morphology to automatically produce a diagnostic result. The diagnostic results will be communicated from the device to a central location using FrontlineSMS, and viewed with our Patient View module and/or sent to OpenMRS with our medical records module. The Ozcan lab at UCLA is developing this device, and we aim to pioneer its use in the developing world.
