Medic Mobile develops technologies to leverage low-cost mobile platforms and connect people at every level of the health system.
There are more than one billion people in the world who may never see a doctor in their lifetime.
Medic Mobile’s mission is to advance health and human flourishing with and for the hardest-to-reach communities. The organization envisions a more just world in which health workers are supported as they provide care for their neighbors, universal health coverage is a reality, and health is a secured human right.
In 2018, Medic Mobile focused on open source with distributed expertise as its primary path to scale. Recognizing the need for shared tools and infrastructure in the field, Medic Mobile and partners launched the Community Health Toolkit. Their tools are now public goods and expertise is transitioning to local partners.
Former Chief Executive Officer, Medic
Josh Nesbit was a pre-medical student at Stanford in 2007 when he spent a summer in Malawi working with a rural hospital treating malaria. Patients walked as far as 100 miles to the hospital, which had just one doctor. Community health workers walked 35 miles to deliver reports. While in the field one day with a health worker, he realized that he had and stronger cell phone reception than he was used to in California. This shifted his focus from medicine to health systems design and mobile health. He returned to the hospital in 2008 to pilot a six-month project with community health workers, building an information platform using cell phones, a laptop, and text-messaging technology. The healthcare workers used mobile phones to register and stay in touch with patients, share information and get consultations with staff at regional hospitals and clinics. Medic Mobile became an independent organization within a few years. The organization builds software for a new model of care and Medic Mobile serves as the technical steward for the Community Health Toolkit. This open-source software helps ensure safe births, track outbreaks, treat illnesses at the doorstep, keep stock of essential medicines, communicate about emergencies, and more.
By the end of 2021, Medic Mobile’s open-source software supported more than 41,000 frontline health workers caring for an estimated 15 million people in 18 countries across Africa and Asia. In 2019, health workers used the software to conduct 2.2 million assessments for children, 321,000 referrals for children, 102,000 deliveries with skilled care, 360,000 post-natal care visits, and 113,000 counseling sessions with women on family planning options. Medic Mobile combines data science, data analysis, and mixed-methods research to deliver insights relevant to products, system design, and policy. They have developed an equity lens process and have started building and embedding predictive models to guide care.
As the world recognizes Universal Health Coverage Day on December 12th, two Skoll community members reflect on their partnership’s progress towards achieving UHC in one of the world’s most challenging…
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