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Causes: Health, Health (General & Financing)
Mission: Medic mobile uses communication technologies to improve the health of under-served and disconnected communities. The organization sees communication gaps through the eyes of community-based health workers and patients, guiding the organization's partners towards low-cost technologies and efficient health services.
Programs: Medic mobile was founded in 2009 to improve health in underserved communities. Our organization builds mobile applications for community health workers (chws), household caregivers, patients, and clinical staff. We see communication gaps through the eyes of health workers and patients, and co-design health care delivery systems with local implementing partners. As of 2014, medic mobile has worked with 60 partners across 20 countries in africa, asia, north america, and south america. Based in san francisco with regional offices in africa and asia, our technology supports over 8,000 frontline health workers. Collectively, these health workers serve more than 1 million families. In six months, our pilot in malawi saved hospital staff 1200 hours of follow-up time and over $3,000 in motorbike fuel. Over 100 patients started tb treatment after their symptoms were noticed by chws and reported by text-message. Results continued as we expanded our work. For example, drug stock reporting improved from less than 35% to over 80% across 10 districts in malawi, and speed of reporting for infectious diseases increased dramatically. We have designed and implemented randomized-controlled trials in india, nepal, bangladesh, kenya, ethiopia, and the us. These studies focus on improving access, adherence, and quality for established healthcare interventions, including antenatal and postnatal care, access to skilled birth attendants, childhood immunizations, and child health treatments. Medic mobile's technology tools are free and open source. In 2011, medic mobile announced its sim card application framework, the medic mobile sim app, which runs on any gsm device including the simplest and most affordable phones. Using parallel sims that fit underneath standard sim cards, we can deploy applications with data validation, skip logic, and a simple user interface. Our core medic mobile platform is a web application that manages contacts and relationships, enabling automated messaging with contacts, group messaging, and gathering information. In 2014, we launched new analytics tools for managers and clinical staff. Our team includes software developers, designers, project managers and researchers. The interdisciplinary nature of our team helps us build the right tools and implement high-impact projects.