Posts by Josh Nesbit
EOTV: Cell Phone Spring Break 2009 - Uganda!
Published March 10, 2009 @ 07:44AM PT
An MTN van in Kampala, Uganda, courtesy of FutureAtlas.com
In two weeks, I’ll be in the middle of my very last Spring Break - the final hiatus before finishing up my undergraduate studies at Stanford. Some of my friends are booking beach houses in Cabo San Lucas. I’m preparing for a slightly different trip.
I’ll spend ten days in rural Uganda, working with Dr. Elioda Tumweisgwe to set up FrontlineSMS:Medic programs at Bushenyi Medical Center and Kabwohe Clinical Research Center in the western district of Bushenyi. Dr. Tumweisgwe is the Chairman of the Uganda Parliament’s HIV Committee.
I’ll be carrying admittedly strange luggage - 100, recycled cell phones, two donated laptops, antimalarial medication, and a bag of solar panels. The phones are all java-enabled, an important specification given the release of the FrontlineForms client, last week. Over 200 community health workers (CHWs), along with the patients they serve, await the SMS program’s arrival. The CHWs cover 800,000 people in 29 subcounties and 2,304 villages.
There’s plenty of work to be done before I leave. The other weekend, FrontlineSMS:Medic had a team summit at Stanford. For 48 hours, the e-mails, tweets, Skype conferences, and Google Docs subsided and face-to-face discussions birthed a true (albeit penniless) organization.
We are a team of ambitious 20-somethings, volunteers and optimists. There are currently fifteen Country Directors who will work alongside community partners as they roll out SMS programs at more than 25 sites across four continents. While assisting these clinics, a team of software developers will be working with FrontlineSMS:Medic’s partners to open up a new and exciting world for mHealth. Our strong connections to in-country partners will provide the ability to shape innovations based on feedback from the very same healthcare workers we’re looking to serve and support.
After months of work in the US, the coming weeks will undoubtedly provide a breath of fresh air and refuel my commitment to this work. My time working with the CHWs in Uganda will be “caught on tape,” thanks to a Flip video camcorder provided by the Clinton Global Initiative. I’ll certainly share that footage when I’m back - just don’t expect any party scenes.
This is the second post by Josh Nesbit in the inaugural Entrepreneurs on the Verge series, a feature which will follow the lives and work of four up and coming social entrepreneurs for the next six months. Josh is a senior at Stanford University and co-founder of FrontlineSMS:Medic, an organization designed to help community health workers use mobile technology to expand the quality and scope of their care. Read more about Josh on his website Jopsa.org
EOTV: Doing Mobile Health Right
Published February 24, 2009 @ 10:49AM PT
It's July 8th, 2008, in Namitete, Malawi. St. Gabriel's Hospital receives a text message from a community health worker (CHW), 40 miles away. A man, suffering from epilepsy, fell into a fire and developed a massive ulcer on his left heel.
I hop on the back of a motorbike with a nurse and a bag of drugs, and jet through villages to get to the patient's home. His heel is a mess - there is no way he could have traveled to the hospital. As Alex bandages the patient's foot and explains proper administration of pain medication to the CHW, community members gather in the background, eager to witness an unprecedented medical response.
Earlier in the summer, I lugged 100 recycled cell phones, a donated laptop and a copy of FrontlineSMS through customs. In eight weeks, the hospital staff and I trained 75 CHWs to text-message. Alex Ngalande, the Home-Based Care nurse, had never used a computer in his life. After a few hours playing with FrontlineSMS, he was coordinating a community health network from a laptop. The network allows the hospital to track patients, record HIV and TB drug adherence, stay updated on patient status, mobilize remote communities for outreach testing, and provide instant drug dosage/usage information. Every piece of functionality developed from what the hospital and communities needed.
I spent my summer and Winter break in Malawi - which included Christmas, New Years, and my birthday. I left a family in the US to reconnect with family in Namitete, spending the holidays with groups of friends in the surrounding villages. When I wasn't working on the SMS program, I was proving my worth - consuming plenty of nsima, continuing an unbeaten streak as the local football team's goalkeeper, and broadcasting over-rehearsed Chichewa greetings.
I'm now back at Stanford, finishing up my Senior year. Since leaving Malawi last summer, I've jumped headfirst into expanding and replicating the Mobiles in Malawi pilot. I spend more than six hours a day talking with heads of NGOs, CEOs of corporations, government officials, in-country project managers, university faculty, and - basically - anyone interested in the project.
I do what I can to stay connected to the hospital and the patients it serves. When the internet is working, incoming texts are forwarded from the hospital to an email account. I wake up every morning to messages from the communities surrounding St. Gabriel's. It's a powerful way to start the day.
Over the next few months, I'll be sharing stories as we launch FrontlineSMS:Medic, to extend the capabilities of the FrontlineSMS software and bring SMS programs to health centers across several continents.
Josh Nesbit is the co-founder of FrontlineSMS:Medic and has spent much of the last year in Malawi helping community health workers to improve the reach and quality of the care they provide by harnessing mobile technology.
This is the first column of the Entrepreneurs on the Verge series, which will spend the next six months following the stories of four social innovators working around the world.
